State of the Garden in Photos: July

July is the peak of the summer perennial garden and the month when the vegetable garden seems to grow before your very eyes. Here’s a tour of what’s happening in The Creative Vegetable Gardener’s test gardens this month.

Alliums and More Alliums...

This year I will likely harvest about 500 onions and 200 heads of garlic – alliums take up a lot of space in my garden each year. July is allium harvest month when both crops will come out of the garden to cure for winter storage. The harvest will open up a large amount of space to plant fall crops like spinach, beets and carrots in the coming weeks.

Compost Matters

The soil in my backyard garden isn’t as rich and healthy as the soil in my community garden plot. I am often reminded of this fact by the differences between the plants in the two locations. But in this particular backyard bed of Brussels sprouts, basil, kohlrabi, kale and flowers, everything is lush and healthy. I think it’s partially due to the fact that my old compost bins were emptied onto this bed last fall. I also located a new empty compost bin on that bed over the winter. You can read more about my compost bin stroke of genius last fall in this post.

Rabbits = Row Cover + Fences

I have always had trouble with rabbits in my unfenced backyard garden. This year, every time I remove the row cover from their favorite snacks like kale, lettuce and beans, I come out to the garden the next day to find evidence of their eating-focused visits to my garden. I am growing weary of trying to work around the rabbits’ hearty appetites, so I have decided to put up a temporary fence for this season while I figure out my long term plan. It’s not quite done yet, so some of the row cover remains in place.

Bring It On…Hot Weather

If you want to gauge how hot the summer has been so far you can walk out to your garden and examine the eggplant, okra and pepper plants. After a long, cold spring and what feels like an unseasonably cool summer these crops seem to be sitting in their garden beds still trying to decide whether they’ll grow this season or not. After my record red pepper harvest last summer I am hoping that we get a string of hot weather to coax these hesitant plants along a bit quicker. We’re likely only 90 days or so from our first frost, so they better get a move on.

My tomatoes seem to be a little happier with the weather, so it’s about time to starting pruning them. Here they are in a mixed bed with celery and my favorite vegetable garden annual – verbena bonariensis.

Perfect Partners

July is the month of some of my very favorite perennial flower combinations. The yellow of Moonbeam Coreopsis alongside the orange of Butterfly Weed is a combo that lasts a long time and sings loud and clear from the garden.

The purple of clematis contrasts well with the yellow of Oxeye Sunflower, below.

I’ll end with a photo of my community garden plot, which is a double plot of 20’x40’. I plant large amounts of several crops in this garden because it’s farther from my home - usually a combination of 35+ tomatoes, 30+ peppers, 200 garlic, and 300-500 onions.

Want to see more? Join me for a class in The Creative Vegetable Gardener’s home test garden in Madison on July 24 called Summer Perennial Garden Design. More details and registration can be found here.

What are the things that excite you about your own garden in July? Leave your comments below this post.