June 2025 Backyard Garden Tour – Kansas – THE GARDEN IS BEHIND!

Hey guys! Welcome back to another video! Today Im showing you a June update of my backyard garden here in Kansas zone 7! The garden is behind the year from a really cool spring! Even though I planted earlier in the season than I typically do! Its always interesting to see the changes year to year! Lets get into this garden tour!

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[Music] Hey guys, welcome back. If you’re new here, hi, I’m Bri. I live in Kansas zone 7A and today I’m going to give you a tour of my backyard garden here in the month of June. We have had a pretty cool spring. I do not recall having a spring this cool since probably the second year I was gardening, which was 6 years ago now. We have not seen things happen that we typically see happen at this point, at least for the last 5 years. The garden actually feels pretty behind. I feel like we’re about 2 weeks off from where we were at this point last year. I went back and looked at June of 2024 and I could not believe how much bigger the lofah was, the onions were. Garlic was pretty much already out and this probably still has another 2 weeks. So, let me show you guys around and explain what’s been going on. We will also probably harvest a few things while we go around today. So, garlic is one of those things I think that’s throwing me off the most. pretty much other than one year. The very first year I grew garlic, it was a cooler season and I harvested it the second week of June. This stuff is still pretty far behind. We’ve only had two of the bottom leaves die and typically I’m looking at a roughly about five to six dying back about half the plant and the scapes are just now like fully starting to appear and be harvested. I’ve harvested most of them at this point, so we should be pretty much done. But there’s a few starting to still pop up. But this has been so odd. I can just really tell with the garlic that we are definitely two weeks behind. I don’t expect to harvest this until probably the second week of June. But the garlic is looking really, really good. I’m pretty happy with how it’s been doing. I have five varieties here. I have four hard necks and then I also have my soft neck variety here. And the soft neck has pretty much uh died a little bit further down. I honestly am thinking I will probably have to harvest this garlic in a few separate waves this year, which I have not done in the past. I typically do one big sweep. Honestly, I could say that now. In the next two weeks, all of this start to really die back all the same and I’ll just do one huge harvest. But the chestnut red put on its scapes first and everything else kind of trickled. So, we’ll see. As of right now, the soft neck garlic is the furthest ahead, but we still have some time. So, a garlic scape is the flower stock of a hard neck garlic. Soft neck won’t produce this, but they’re really, really yummy. They kind of have a texture of an asparagus, but with a lighter garlic flavor. So, I made a biscuit recipe, gosh, la last week, and I’ve made these biscuits now five times. They are so delicious, and they use garlic scapes. I highly suggest trying it. I want to say I have harvested all of the scapes on the chznook. Over here I have Italian purple and this was actually my own seed garlic which all it is is my garlic that I planted. Seed garlic is just a fancy name kind of like seed potatoes. All you’re doing is putting potatoes in the ground and all you’re doing here is putting a garlic clove in the ground. But this is what I think I’m most excited to share with you guys. Okay, so this Cosmo variety might just be one of my new favorites. It’s a variety called Apricotta. And do you see how absolutely beautiful the color is on all of these? I am absolutely loving these. So, this was the year I really wanted to incorporate a lot more pinky colors. I’ve had this yarao in my garden for years now. I want to say it’s been at least four now. And you can see how pretty this is. I have like this really pink yellowy one. And I have a darker pink one here. And then I have a white. That is just what colors ended up coming up. And then I have some echgonia here that will bring those same tones. But the flowers this year really really match the yarao. And I am loving how this is looking so far. This is a Zenya variety called the Ballerina, which is supposed to be a really light pinky tone. So this area here still needs to get going. The pumpkins are starting to take off, but the cantaloupe has been slow. And same with my honey nut squash. And then I had a few birds come through and peck at my sunflowers over here. So I’m almost thinking that my sunflowers might not time out all at the same time this year, which is kind of sad just cuz I had to replant a few. I really like to have a few all blooming at the same time right in the front here. You can clearly see my volunteer sunflower has gone absolutely crazy. And I have pruned this down because the leaves were just going absolutely everywhere. I have Zenya’s cosmos. I have some peppers and then just cantaloupe, which is the hails jumbo. I have a pumpkin variety. I’m really excited about it. It’s supposed to be a little bit more vinebore resistant. And then the winter squash I planted I have grown before. It’s called the honey nut variety, which is also supposed to be a little bit more vinebore resistant. We have a big issue with vinebore and squash bugs here. Honestly, there’s not too much I can do about squash bugs other than picking them off. So, I am definitely not prepared for what the end of June into like September is going to bring when it comes to squash bugs. I’m trying to mentally prepare myself now, but as of right now, I haven’t seen any. The one area this spring that’s been giving me an awful time has been these six beds behind me where I have my tomatoes and peppers. I decided to get some bulk compost and top soil from a company I have used for years now. And this was probably one of my worst decisions when it comes to this spring because everywhere I put that soil has just been an insane amount of weeds and just seedlings popping up. I have probably spent 10 hours or so. Just in the month of May weeding. Last night alone, I weeded this garden for 2 hours. And I don’t know if I’ve ever had to weed that much because I have mentioned in a few videos as well, my straw that I’ve always bought is supposed to be 99% seedfree. And it definitely has not been over the course of probably like the last 8 to n months that I’ve used it. And it sounds like a lot of you guys have been having issues with Easy Straw as well. So, this has been the year I have had to be really on top of my weeding. The areas I didn’t put the new soil have been pretty much pretty reasonable in what my uh weeding typically is like, but this year has just been over the top. And honestly, I’m already pretty overweeding at this point. Here are the teddy sunflowers. These are a dwarf variety that are fuzzy just like the goldie honeys. There’s my other goldie honey there. And then here’s some of the pumpkins. I will probably need to prune the pumpkins back here pretty soon. But you can see the cantaloupe is still pretty small. peppers are starting to go and the flowers are starting to bloom a little bit, but I also uh ended up planting some maragolds in between the trelluses. I don’t know if this is going to help me too much or not, but that should help a little bit with squash bugs. And then I also have some climbing nesters here on the corners of the plants as well, which should also help deter some of those bad bugs. This is the time of year where the chamomile really starts to just clunk out, which is fine. I have plenty of it harvested, but the peppers are really starting to get going. I do have some peppers that have already set on the plants. And then I also have carrots along a handful of the beds here. You can see it over there. But one of the big differences between this year and last year is probably this area. My snapd dragons were already in full bloom. I only have one blooming right now. And then the tomatoes. Um, I already had a good amount of tomatoes set and they were all pretty big at that point. I do have some tomatoes that are setting and I’m really starting to see them fill out, but for some reason the tomatoes just aren’t doing as well as they did last year. Um, last year I had just an amazing tomato season. I’m really hoping that the cool spring is going to go into more of a cooler summer. Um, and these plants will do just fine. Honestly, they don’t do too great once we get into those high 90s, 100s, which is pretty typical for us. So, I’m hoping that with it being a cooler season, it will resemble the season I had roughly 6 years ago where our tomatoes just did phenomenal because they just weren’t bombarded by heat. So, one thing with tomatoes, if you’re new to gardening, is their flowers really won’t set as much once you get into those high heat temperatures. So, your yield typically ends up being a little less. I had a great season last year. I had no issues with yield. Um I’m really hoping I just have a very similar season to last year. I want to say I probably canned over 200 lbs or so of tomatoes from the garden. But right now it’s looking like again we’re going to be a few weeks behind of harvesting any tomatoes. So I’m thinking at this point with them just setting, we’re probably going to start harvesting red tomatoes sometime early in July. But we probably still have it about four or 5 weeks cuz once that tomato fruit sets and it’s green, you’re roughly looking at about four more weeks before it ripens. So, we do have some time on those. I did do a new snapdragon variety this year, which does look pretty similar to last year’s. I do have some volunteers right here from last year’s variety, but it’s just slightly less deep in tones. Again, I really wanted to have lighter color tones that all kind of went. And this is a variety called the Can’s orange three. And I don’t know, I love snapdragons so much. The one thing that’s so fun about a snapdragon is the head almost looks like a dragon head. And if you pinch the back of the flower right here, it opens up where it’s like a fire breathing dragon. Sometimes they won’t do Oh, there we go. That one’s doing it really good. But it’s so much fun. I think they’re just such a beautiful flower. I’m really excited because you can see I have a lot of color on these starting to poke out. So, these should be blooming very, very soon. I have some tomatoes set. Like, this one’s doing really, really good. But, I am having some issues with some leaf curl. Um, it’s not as bad as it was now that our temperatures kind of dipped back down and we’ve just been really rainy and kind of cloudy. I’m almost wondering if this is sun stress. I’m not quite sure cuz I’m pruning them the exact same I’ve pruned them over the last few years. Um, I did read that leaf curl can be just a stress thing where if they get pruned a little too much, they can just leaf curl. It can also be a sign of herbicide damage, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case for this year. I did have that issue last year with my tomatoes along the fence over there. But these Oh, I’ll just show you. I’ll walk over there and show you the Romas along the fence versus the Romas here. So, here’s a few of the Roma plants. The leaves are just curling. They’re kind of just curling. They don’t look that great. And then I go over to where I have my other Romaas planted. And this is the craziest thing. Do you guys see how well these plants look? They look a lot fuller and they’re doing really well. The only difference is these shade out for peak day, which having a shade cloth and doing things like that can really help. And I’m almost wondering if it’s just a sun issue because that is one of my sunnier areas, but that is where I had them planted last year. So, I don’t know. This area over here shades out during peak sun and it’s not showing the stress that the other plants are showing. And they’re pruned the exact same way, but they’re doing a lot better. So, I don’t know. I’ve kind of given up on trying to figure that out. But while we’re over here, I’ll show you guys. Here’s our tomatillos. This is a new one for me this year. Um, they’re getting really big, but they are doing really well. I don’t even know what to look for when it comes to the tomatillos, but they’re flowering a lot. And then I have all of my jalapenos. The one thing I am absolutely loving this year though is where I put my bird bath. I put my bird bath in the middle of my yarao patch. And honestly, I think it’s so cool and I think the birds are loving it cuz it gives them a little bit of privacy while they’re getting their nice little bath. I can’t see them from my window as well as I could before the yarao grew in, but I think it just makes it so pretty and the birds are loving it. And I also have some carrots planted along the edging here. So last year I played around with planting my carrots along the edges of a few beds and it worked amazing. I think the edging of the bed worked so well because that’s typically the area that dries out the fastest in my garden bed. So those carrots were really trying to reach for that water. So if you’re planting carrots and you’ve struggled with carrots, one of my biggest tips for growing carrots is to water them really deep and then go a few days between waterings. That way they have enough water, but then they’re also trying to reach and grab any water that’s lower. If you lightly water your carrots, your water isn’t going to get to that lower part of the soil and your root isn’t going to grow towards that water. So, I have found that to be great. And honestly, I feel like that uh the edging of the bed works great for carrots simply because it dries out quicker. I’m able to water it and it gives me an extra crop in an area I typically can’t plant another crop. So, I really like that little hack and I hope that helps you growing carrots cuz for me it took me a handful of years to really get the hang of carrots. I definitely had some beginner’s luck. Uh, but now I feel like I have a lot more consistency in how I grow carrots. Okay, I’m going to insert a clip of where this trellis space was at last year cuz I think this is the biggest difference between the garden. And honestly, I’m a little worried about the timing of the lofah this year, just because with how slow it’s been going compared to where it was last year, I already had fruit really setting at this point last year. I have a few starting to poke out, but I’m really thinking we probably won’t start getting harvest of lofah until probably the end of August this year. I want to say it was beginning of August last year. Um, so I don’t know. It’ll be really interesting to see how many lofah I end up having green at the end of the season. But here’s another little tip for you. Last year, I played around a lot with processing green lofah in a few ways. One of the ways I did it was the oven method, which I highly suggest doing over just laying them flat. But I will link videos on um the processing of lofah with those if you’re interested. But even then, the green beans are behind. I have green beans right here. This is a variety called seells. I really like it. It’s a pool bean variety, and it’s done pretty well for me. Um, last year I got multiple waves of green beans all throughout the season, but you can see they’re starting to really take off. Like this one here is the outlier. It’s already toward the top. This one’s about right here. Um, so they’re really starting to get going. This trellus will really, really start to fill out now that this has really started to take hold. I do have some Chinese red noodle beans over here. Some cantaloupe, cucumber, cacuzzi gourd. I want to say that is it other than the peas here, which the peas have started to put on. I need to harvest a few of them. So, lofah is starting to take hold, but it’s still so tiny. You can see there’s a few itty bitty tiny lofah starting to pop up. But even this one, this one over here is even shorter. That’s actually like you can see that that one flowered and that one’s probably growing. But still so small because last year they were clear up to here already. I can’t remember the variety they are, but it’s been doing really well. It’s putting on these beautiful like pink and purple blooms. You might be able to see it’s kind of matching uh the poppies over here. This is one of those areas I am really excited about and I feel like it’s working really well. So, last year I had a lot of issues with high wind. We do live in Kansas, but last year the wind was just a whole other level and this year has been a whole other level. We had a day where we had roughly 70 to 80 mile per hour winds. I mean, we had multiple days of high winds. Not that high, but pretty high. And I know a lot of you guys have been experiencing just wind issues. So, the one thing I did this year, because last year I had a lot of issues with curing cuz I had a lot of breakage in my onion greens and then we also had a really, really wet spring and I believe that’s what caused some fungal issues with my onions. But this year, I really wanted to try to block the wind in some kind of way just to help out the onions. I don’t have this issue with garlic. The garlic has a really thin strong leaf. When the onions have a hollow out stem here and it’s a little bit thinner. So once wind comes, it will kind of knock those over, bend them, and then they eventually break if they’re just constantly dealing with that. That 70 to 80 mph day we had even caused some issues with the garlic this year. I had garlic kind of flopped over and the onions handled it like a champ. So, what I have here is some metal hooping. This is a um 3/4 of an inch metal rod that you can buy at most hardware stores. And then Bootstrap Farmer has a hoop bender where you just place it onto a wall or you have it on a sturdy surface and you’re able to bend these hoops pretty easily. So I have what five hoops here and then I just have some solar plastic that that I folded in half. Um and then I clipped up with these clips here. So this the whole reason why I thought of this whole plan was cuz Bootstrap Farmer came out with these uh this last year. I’ve had these hoops, but one of the issues I’ve ran into is being able to keep any type of insect netting or plastic on them pretty easily. And then they came out with these clips here, and they all they do is just slide on to the metal really, really easily. And they are so strong. I haven’t had a single one fall off, and it’s just been really easy. Uh yesterday, I actually took all of this plastic down to weed the onion bed. And I’m able to take this down and put it back up so quickly that it doesn’t bother me to do it. I honestly thought that might be one of the things that I wouldn’t like. I thought it would might take me a while. But I am loving this setup. It’s working so well. So with the plastic, one of the reasons why I didn’t just cut it to this length and I folded it in half is so if I run into the same issue I did last year. So, when an onion matures, the greens are going to flop over and that’s your indicator that they’re pretty close to being ready to be harvested. They’re going to die back in their current spot. And the issue I had last year is is it was a wet spring into early summer. And what ended up happening was a lot of my onions were starting to flop over and we were just having continuous rain. And one thing I personally like to do and is suggested with growing onions is to cut back your water in those final few weeks. That way they can really start drying out. So if I have a rainy like beginning of summer this year while these are starting to mature and die back, I can actually unfold this and be able to use it as a top layer to hopefully keep that soil dry. And honestly, I don’t think these greens are going to be growing too much more at this point. So, I’m thinking my whole random plan for the onions this year is going to work out. Um, and I’m really excited about my wind block. This was an idea that I was trying to figure out in late winter because I was like, I’m not having the same issues I had last year with the onions. So, here is a little closer look at the onions. They are starting to bulb up a little bit, but you can see they look really, really healthy. I have pretty minimal breakage on the greens, even if they are folded over. So, I am truly just really, really happy about this. And let me show you the clip a little closer up. So, I mean, they are they are snug on there, guys. Um, but they look like this. And you just pin up your thing and slap it on really easy. I started to harvest some broccoli this week. I am going to harvest two of the heads. There’s a few heads that aren’t looking as tight at the moment. This is that time of year that I’m typically having to harvest my broccoli pretty quickly. A lot of my other cool weather leafy greens have already bolted and they’re out of the garden. So, romaine lettuce we’re already done with. My spinach I’m already done with. This broccoli I’ll probably be done with in the next week. And then we will get this bed kind of situated a little bit. This might be a blank area for about 3 to 4 weeks before I replant out some cool weather crops for the fall months. Um, it’s just one of those areas that really shades out compared to a lot of the other parts of the garden. I am thinking I might plant a round of tomatoes where I have my cabbages, but for the most part, this area is about to be finishing up. But the broccoli this year is so good. One of the varieties I found a lot of success with is the Bellstar. mostly because we have a lot of fluctuating temperatures here and every year is so different. Um to where I just have issues with bolting when it comes to cool weather crops. Cool weather crops are a little bit tricky. We tend to get hot pretty quick here and we stay hot to where fall can also be an issue with some things. But the Bellar is more stress resistant and I have found it to be the only broccoli I’ve been able to grow outside of a purple broccoli in the fall one year that hasn’t bolted on me and gone to seed. I really like this variety. It tastes amazing. The heads aren’t as big as some of the other varieties, but they’re a good size to where it’s perfectly fine for a dinner. I’m definitely like not worried about it. Now, one thing when you harvest broccoli, if you harvest the head and just leave it, the plants will actually send off some offshoots that you can harvest as well. But I leave the plants so I can just harvest a few of the bottom leaves as well. And we can give these to the chickens as a little treat. Hi guys. This head is a lot tighter. And this one is starting to become a little bit looser. This will start to show a little bit more yellow. You can see the yellow pockets starting to form where it’s looser. These are where the broccoli will actually flower if you let it go a little too long. So, I’m probably not going to let a lot of this broccoli go much longer. But these look beautiful. The other heads I harvested earlier in the week were a little bit bigger than what these ones are. Probably only let a few of these go a few more days. You can see this one’s starting to split a little bit more, but that one’s a little bit smaller. I want to give it just a little bit more time. My collards are doing really, really well as well. I was really on top of picking off cabbage moss for about 3 weeks and I timed it really, really well this year where I really haven’t had many issues. But the spinach is out. All of the remain is out. I still have a few cabbages. The cabbages got hit a little bit with some pest damage, but honestly, you pick off a few of these leaves and they are just fine. The one bean I planted here is called the hyasin bean, and I had some issues with some germination. So, I’m getting another seed packet. I have one here, here, a few there, but I wanted this whole area planted and that’s all that came up. Oh my gosh. But check out these poppies, guys. They are just so beautiful. So, this year I planted out two different types of bread seed poppy. This is a variety called the Hungarian blue seed. And then I also have a pepper box mix, I believe. But these are just so beautiful. So, the bread seed poppy is used for more culinary purposes. And last year I made so much lemon poppy seed bread that I am so excited about. I want to say there’s a little less poppies planted this year cuz I tried to space them out a little bit. The one thing I have found with growing poppies over the last like 3 years is they have really really thin foliage and if they have too much moisture, they just are havoc for disease on those bottom leaves. So since we were getting so much rain last week, I went and pruned off a ton of the bottom leaves and they are looking so good. So, that’s my big tip. They do suggest having them about 6 in apart or so. And last year, I want to say I planted them way closer and just had a ton of disease issues, but this year it’s been going really, really well. I’m so excited about them. This was probably one of my favorite things I grew last year. All right, so otherwise, I have potatoes over here that I desperately need to mulch some more. I’m really excited. They’re doing really, really well. This was a very last minute addition for me. I was able to get the seed potato, I think like 30% off, so I saved some money there, which is really nice. And they’re doing really good. I have a honeysuckle over here. And then I just have a ton of volunteer sunflowers, which I have thinned out. But you can see there’s so many more popping up. I’m just going to leave a lot of the bigger ones, but I want this whole area to just kind of fill out with really big, beautiful sunflowers since they’re all popping up anyway. And this will act as a secondary feed for the chickens or any of the birds. We have one of our elderberries, which is looking like Ooh, okay. I have not popped over here. So, I need to get some netting on some of these. I came through and I just handpollinated because my elderberries were blooming at separate times and I finally got a bloom off of my second elderberry over there and I came over and I just self-pollinated. So, I don’t know why they’re timed out different, but I need both of them to help pollinate the plant. We actually have some berries this year. It’s not they’re not as full as I would have hoped for, but I am going to get um some little jewelry bag netting mesh bags on these so the birds don’t end up eating them. And hopefully that means we will have some elderberries that we can process into syrup in the fall. You can see this whole bloom right here is non-existent. One of the reasons why I went ahead and harvested some of the elderflower for tea is because I had a I had a feeling I was going to have an issue with some of the pollination with the elderberry again this year because I had it last year as well. So, I don’t know. I’m going to play around with planting that out probably in a different area. But, this also just hasn’t been this spring for berries. I also feel like the strawberries are behind um because I really am I’m not getting much strawberries. They are in a little bit more of a shady location compared to last year. Um, but I think we’re really just starting to gear up on the strawberries as well. These plants are starting to put on a lot of fruit, but they’re really not producing many yet. Just enough where I can toss them into a breakfast or a smoothie or something like that. So, nothing too crazy. But that is how the garden is looking like at the beginning of June, guys. I’m going to try to keep up with doing these garden tours this year at the beginning of each month. There’s been some years where I’ve done it more in the middle of the month, but I think it’s really cool to see the beginning and the end of what the month will look like because it can change so much in a four-week period. I’m wishing you guys a great gardening season. I hope it’s going well for you. Let me know if it’s been a cooler season for you as well and the things that you’ve been noticing because it sounds like a lot of you guys have experienced the exact same thing I’m experiencing this year. But as always guys, thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one. Bye.