In the Garden Year 2 - July - Sungrown Kitchen

It's our second year of growing our own food in our raised bed veggie gardens! Check out the July update, see how things are growing, and find lots of garden harvest recipes!

A flagstone path with flowers and herbs leading to raised bed vegetable gardens.

Summer is Flying!

Suddenly it's the middle of summer and our freezer is so full of berries we are running out of room for much else! Everything else is looking good, except for what looks like some blight on some tomato leaves.

Raised bed gardens with huge green zucchini plants.

We've been getting a lot of hot, 85-90° July days lately so maybe that's why.

A colander of harvested veggies including zucchini, beans, and peppers.

What's Growing in the Garden?

We are getting a LOT of garden fresh foods! These have been the best vegetables to grow in our raised beds! We've been eating lots of pea pods, kohlrabi, cauliflower, lettuce, basil, a few green and purple bush beans, kale, Swiss chard, banana peppers, and scallions.

Zucchini and yellow crook-neck squash are starting and we've been making these Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins and a batch of Healthy Zucchini Cookies for the freezer.

Zucchini and yellow summer squash growing in the garden.

Lots of Berries

We've got an extremely abundant harvest of berries! Garden fresh strawberries made a delicious Strawberry Shortcake and a Mixed Berry Rhubarb Crisp with some rhubarb from a neighbor.

A metal colander full of a mixture of fresh picked berries.

We have two mulberry trees and berry picking started June 23 and hasn't stopped! We made an easy Mulberry Freezer Jam. The raspberry patch started ripening on June 30 and is just getting started.

A few black raspberry canes have been popping up around the yard by accident, and a few juneberries are growing on the bushes we planted last year.

A handful of juneberries (serviceberries).

Berry picking can be a big job! But I love the outside work of it, and I love having berries on the counter, all over the fridge and in the freezer.

Kids holding carrots pulled from the garden with dirt on them.

We've been making lots of Smoothies, putting them on our yogurt with Homemade Almond Spiced Granola, and the kids eat a lot of them for snacks. Telling them to go "pick" their own garden fresh snacks is a beautiful thing!