July 2025 Backyard Garden Tour

Hey guys! Im so excited to share the garden with you all today! It finally feels like Im getting some good luck on my side after a crazy start to the gardening year!

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Hey guys, welcome back. If you’re new here, hi, I’m Bri. I garden in Kansas Zone 7. And today, I’m going to give you a tour of my backyard garden here in the month of July. As you might be able to see, the garden has definitely started to boom. We should technically be around the peak part of our year right now, but we are still definitely weeks behind compared to previous years. It’s been really interesting because we’ve had a very wet and cool spring into summer. We’ve been getting hot, but we still keep randomly having these cool, rainy time periods. and it’s kind of just throwing things off, especially the onions. We’ll talk about that once we get over there. The garden is starting to definitely boom. You can see the trellus is starting to fill out. This sunflower is absolutely massive and there’s a ton to talk about. So, let’s just go ahead and jump right in. I’m going to start by talking about these teddy bear sunflowers. So, if you’re not new here, you’ve been following me for quite some time, you know I absolutely love the Goldie Honey Bear sunflower. These kind of look like these, but they’re about this tall and they have bigger, fluffier flowers. But these teddy bears only get to be about 2 and 1/2, 3 ft high. And they also do the same branching effect and they have these beautiful fluffy flowers. And I’m loving them for a border. I decided to do these two as kind of my symmetrical side of the garden cuz I originally thought this sunflower here was a Goldie Honey Bear and is clearly not. This thing is massive. These are definitely going to stay in the garden. And then of course I have all of my other sunflowers here. The trelluses are the real superstars at the moment because they look beautiful and there’s no disease. These are called the Long Island cheese pumpkin and they are supposed to have some vine bore resistability. And I will say I have not had any issues. Over here is my honey nut squash. You can see they’re these little personalsiz butternut squashes. For the most part they are a little bit darker in color inside. These also are vinebore resistant. And I have really good luck with these. So I was like, “All right, let me give these a try cuz I really, really want to have a pumpkin.” This one here is my biggest so far. Look at that thing. I am really, really excited about this. And here is the honey nuts I was talking about. So the honey nut squash is also doing really good. I think this is one of the best honey nut squashers I’ve seen so far. These are about the size they are going to be. They will um turn an orange color once they are ready. I’ve got two up here along with these two trelluses here. I also have cantaloupe right here. And there’s also cantaloupe planted over here on this side. Look like I might need to straighten these out a little bit, but the cantaloupe is still a little bit uh behind. At this point last year, it was already completely wrapped around the top twice. I will say though, I do have some good looking cantalopes forming. So this guy over here is probably the biggest and that is pretty decent. These things actually get huge. These zenyas. Okay, these are the ballerina zenyas I was super super excited about this year. And the size of them are just insane. Just found squash bug eggs on the canal. Here’s another one. And this one’s probably one of my favorites. Do you see kind of the splashing effect on the tips? It looks like paint kind of splashed and then the edges of this like come on. They are all different and how they are, but they all like go together and just so so beautiful. I will say one of you guys told me that the Cinderellas also disappointed you. That’s what this variety is. They’re supposed to be a fluffy Zenya and I originally got them because I’m obsessed with the fluffy sunflowers. And you mentioned how once they get on past their first blooms, they get a bit better. And I will say they do they are doing a bit better. I’m still not fully sold on them yet, but I do think they look really pretty alongside the ballerinas. I get this batch of eggs before I forget where it’s at. There we go. So, this is where I typically start the garden tours. At least I have in years past because you can really kind of grasp the front of the garden. That sunflower is really, really tall. It’s doing really good. These are all my volunteers. So, this was another volunteer that popped up sometime in February as well. And they haven’t started to really bloom yet, which kind of shocks me. I feel like we’re really, really close to it. But then we have the three beds I had all of my garlic in, and I finally got those replanted. So, I planted these two front ones with corn. I think by the time these teddy bears are done blooming, the corn will really start to get tall enough where they’ll kind of it really won’t matter anyway. So, I planted two beds of corn this year. And I also planted uh some more peppers over here and then a few of my tomato starts that I started in June. Got to give you guys a closeup of these teddy bear though. Oh, perfect timing. Hi, Bee. I am loving them. And you can see how many more blooms are on these things. Like they are loaded up. H I love sunflower season. As the trend goes, my carrots have been behind, but I also actually planted my carrots a bit late, but this one’s looking like it might be ready. So, let’s see. That is a pretty good carrot. I would say I could probably go through and harvest a good amount at the moment. They’d probably be ready. So, I randomly decided to line my garden beds with carrots last year because I had no idea where I was going to put carrots. But then I had some of the best looking carrots I’ve ever grown in my life. And I think one of those reasons is because the edging of the garden bed will dry out a lot faster, causing your root to reach down and look for water. And I think it’s just worked really, really well for me. So, I’ve been liking that. I did that again this year. and it just allows me to fit even more in this space. So, otherwise over here I have my snapd dragons. I also have some really pretty cosmos and some other zenyas. But then I have the area that got hit really, really bad with herbicide damage. I finally have all these tomatoes planted. I do need to cage up a few more, but I’m starting to get some little tomatoes on these guys and they should catch up pretty quickly to be honest with you. So, I still think I can probably get a decent round of tomatoes this year, even with all my bad luck with tomatoes. But, I will say I do have a few that are ready. So, this corner back here is the one area that got hit with herbicide damage the most. And I will say I did a bean test and all my soil came back just fine. So, you can see I have pruned up this plant quite heavily though cuz like I was saying, fungal problems are popping up left and right because of the wet wet spring and then all of this humidity and heat came. I don’t know if this plant will really survive that much longer, but I will get a good wave of fruit off of it. These are just some classic Romas. Nothing fancy. I have all of my jalapenos behind you. And then I have sranos, cayenne, peppas, some bell peppers. I have some Thai peppers and snacking peppers planted throughout the garden. And I will say I feel like the peppers are doing phenomenal this year. There’s a ton of fruit on them. There’s also a good amount of flowers still going. And I am going to get some significant harvests of peppers. I think what I’m going to have to do cuz a lot of these peppers were also planted for salsa purposes. I don’t think everything’s going to time out. So, I still think I’ll have enough peppers in the fall time to be able to do some salsa. I’m hoping. But a lot of these peppers are probably going to be turned into hot sauce and then powder. So, one thing I did last year that I loved is I freeze-dried a bunch of my extra peppers that I had no idea what I was going to do with. And I really wanted to experiment with making hot sauces out of freeze-dried pepper and it worked out amazing. So, freeze dryers will keep your flavor the exact same as if it were to be fresh. It tastes almost identical to be honest with you. And all you have to do is reconstitute it with water. So I just played around with trying to figure out the ratios of how much water I really needed to rehydrate the pepper without it getting too runny. And it honestly worked out really well. So that’s going to be probably my plan for a lot of the peppers is I will probably freeze dry a good amount of them so then I can use them in Oh, that’s the other thing. I just chopped up a bunch, too. And I had green chilies ready for any type of chili I wanted to make instead of those canned green chilies that you can buy at the store. So, I will be doing probably a lot of that because it’s very versatile. I could either keep them chopped up or I can blend them really quickly and make a hot sauce. With a lot of my jalapenos, I will wait for those to turn red and I will make some Sriracha. Which, speaking of, I think I might see Yep, there’s one. There’s a very small red one. But yeah, if you didn’t know that if you leave jalapenos on your plant long, they ripen to a red and that is what Sriracha is made out of. These plants are quite literally just filled with so many jalapenos. I will probably need to make some jalapeno poppers and things like that this year, too. Here’s the sranos. They are looking absolutely beautiful. Ooh, look. It actually looks like I have a red srano, too. I will do batches of hot sauce with red sranos and jalapenos. So, that’s exciting there. That’s a really good sized serrano. And then I have some red cayenne over here that I need to get to. This cayenne variety, guys, is my absolute favorite I have ever grown. So, you can see they are a very big size. Like, this is a cayenne. You can see how big that is. So, the one reason I really love them though is cuz I powder a lot of mine down for cayenne powder or I do red chili flakes and things like that. And it’s a lot easier to process them. They are thicker walled. They’re still thinner than a bell pepper would be, but they’re very similar to the peppas I grow. Um, but I I love this pepper so much. This is the second year I grew it. I was on the search for a pepper like this for years and I was so disappointed by so many of the cayenne varieties I grew. So if you’re very similar to me and you do a lot of processing with your cayenne, highly suggest this variety. So moving on, we have our trellis tunnel here. And the one thing that’s been very interesting is I’ve never had this problem before and I typically don’t have issues with birds, but I feel like there is a bird that is pecking at my lofah. I will show you guys the holes closer up in a second, but the lofah guys, I really don’t think this is going to be my lofah year. Last year, I think I had 80 something lofas in total between ones that were fully dried on the vine and ones I were I was able to process. I still have lofah, but the one thing is is I started to make my chickens nesting pads out of lofah. I might have enough to get me through because one thing I started to do is patch up those nesting pads once they are used. And I will show you guys those uh once we get over to the chicken area if someone’s not laying. They might be a little bit dirty at the moment, but I’ve been able to spray them, clean them, patch them using lofah I grew in my backyard. The chickens use them. They’ve never had a problem with them. It’s my fun little hack. I love being able to grow something and use it for a full purpose on my space cuz I have limited space. I want to make sure whatever I’m growing, I’m using to the best of my ability and using everything I possibly can. Other than the lofah here, I have a ton of green beans. A new one for me this year is this red noodle bean, guys. I just found them very, very interesting. Here’s what I mean with the lofah. There’s a hole in it. There’s another hole in it. And again, I typically don’t have issues with birds. I think this was just something super random because I have just as much birds this year as I have in year years past. I also have some cucumbers I’m thinking I’m probably going to need to pull. I think it’s probably too hot. Looks like this one almost got away from me and it’s a little bit misshaped, but that’s all right. And then another new one for me this year is the cacuzzi gold. So, this thing has some of the softest leaves, guys. I don’t even know if you can tell, but it feels like velvet. It is so crazy. But this is a gourd that gets really big. I believe you use the fruits kind of like a zucchini. So, I’m really excited about that. Let’s chat onions and what’s going on with these guys. As you can see, I do have some patches in there that I’ve harvested. I am harvesting as they are showing signs at the moment. And we should be getting really, really close. I have not watered this space at all in the last 2 weeks. Now, this one right here is probably my biggest onion. It is absolutely massive. So, I grow a variety called Calibra. This is my third year growing it. Two years ago, I had a great harvest. I was able to store them clear into January. Last year, I had some issues with curing, and that is why I have this block on top. As as you can see, we got some rain last night. And the one thing is is you don’t want your onions to be soaking wet as they are dying back. The reason I had issues with the onions last year was because we just kept getting rain after rain after rain as they were dying back. So this year I wanted to create a wind block. So then that way the greens would be sturdy. I wouldn’t have a ton of breakage because a lot of breakage and then a lot of rain just causes fungal and disease problems. And I’m pretty sure that’s what ended up happening with my onions in the curing process. I read that both those things can cause them to mold out while they’re curing if they were exposed to those conditions and mine were. And that was the first year I’ve ever had issues curing. So I decided I was going to create a wind block with these hoops here. And then when it came time I could go ahead and undo the wind block but leave this as a cover in case I were to get random rains. I had no control of. So, this has been working really, really well. It’s kept the ground pretty dry. I will say along the edges is getting a little bit wet, but that little bit isn’t that close to the onion anyway, and the greens also aren’t getting wet, so they’re able to fall over naturally. The one issue I ended up having was because of all of the rain in the cooler spring we had, I had a handful of them bolt. Uh, I made a video on that last week. If you’re interested, you can go check that out. I want to say I had six of them. They were going to seed. That is what bolting is. And it’s so weird cuz I’ve never had that issue. And you typically won’t if you start your onions from seed because onions take two full years to even produce seed. But having crazy fluctuating temperatures like that and rain and weather conditions can trick your onions into thinking they’ve gone through a 2-year cycle and they will bolt. Nothing else has shown any other signs of bolting. And when they do show signs of bolting, they will no longer get bigger and they also won’t cure correctly either because they send a stock up and that causes exposure to the bulb causing bacteria to be able to enter. So you want to use those as soon as you possibly can if you do see that happen with your onions. Here’s one that has now flopped over. So when your onion is ready, it will naturally flop over, breaking that head, causing it to start to die back. And that’s great cuz we had some rain overnight. You can see that soil is as dry as can be. There’s no wetness on the leaves at all. So that is great. This is where all of my broccoli and cool weather crops were. I don’t have anything here at the current moment. And now all of the poppies over here have died back as well. So I don’t have too much in my ingground space as we currently speak. But right here on my A-frame trellis, I have the hyasin bean which I am really excited about. was crazy is I was a little sad that a lot of these didn’t end up germinating for me, but the trellis is filling out so much with just a few of them. These have some of the prettiest blooms that I’ve seen and it looks like I should probably be getting something on these plants pretty soon. So, this is not an edible bean, but they looked so pretty. And I have really struggled to find something to grow on this A-frame trellis over here because this area, one reason why I don’t have it really planted at the moment is cuz during peak summer, this area really, really shades out. And I have never been able to get a lot of things to grow really well in this space just with the shade. [Laughter] I show you what the nesting pads are. out of lofah. Again, I can’t can’t confirm if they’re the cleanest at the moment. Do we have any eggs yet? No, no one’s laid yet. Okay, so I have two of them in here. Actually, not that bad. So, this one I actually patched I patched both of them actually cuz typically the middle of these have been getting a little bit more worn, but they have now used the lofah nesting pads I want to say for a full year. And this is my oldest one I made a year ago. And all I did was patch up that middle a little bit and it is still trucking. I have washed these with soap, water, let them dry in the sun and it saved me a ton of money. Each nesting pad I used roughly nine of them. I stuffed them with a little bit of the extra that I cut off cause like allowing them to be a little bit more puffy. And then I have those patched I think with one or two more. So, in total, I think I’ve probably used 12 lofah on those with all the patching as well, which isn’t bad. And lastly, the other thing that’s really cool is I had a ton of those volunteer sunflowers last year and I threw them over in this corner. We do need to kind of cut the grass over here at the moment, but we threw them over here in the corner for the chickens to enjoy. And I just tossed them over here cuz they were all going to seed. And now I created my own sunflower patch that I am so excited about. They put on these really small little tiny sunflowers and it’ll be really pretty. July honestly is one of my favorite months. I think the garden is just so beautiful. You have all of this beautiful foliage before it really gets dead and ugly and everything. Like I said, I do feel like our peak is just a few weeks away just because everything’s really trended a few weeks out. But I think the garden is looking absolutely beautiful right now. And that is kind of the update on everything. I will obviously keep you guys updated on all things garden related over the next handful of weeks. This is my favorite time of the year. I just love the abundance the backyard brings and I can’t wait to share it with all of you. I hope you guys are having a good gardening season wherever you’re at and thank you for stopping by mine today. I will see you guys all in the next one. Bye.