State of the Garden - July ‘25

Halfway through the season! This year, I experimented with growing a lot of the plants in individual pots filled with a new (to me) potting soil called “Coco Loco”. The name is a bit cringey and the stuff was pretty expensive, but I can’t argue with results.

It’s a daily struggle with the heat, but things are looking pretty good!

I have all my peppers in pots, quite a few “volunteer” cherry tomatoes, my most successful cucumber, and of course, herbs and salad greens.

Our yard has an old apricot tree that has been here at least 25 years, and it takes the perfect combination of weather and pests (ahem, squirrels) and past years’ harvests to determine what we get each year. This year was a good one, despite the squirrels being really aggressive about eating as many as they could!

Other areas in the yard include a back corner bed where I have some shady plants, and the front yard low water beds with echinacea and lavender.

I started a native plant garden behind my back fence, and so far there’s not been much growth. The plants have mostly been fighting for their lives with very little water! I hope to take some documenting photos at the end of the season after we have some lower temps and rain!

We had quite a few tasty apricots!

One of my newer hostas in flower (I lost the previous one to the gopher)

Before I started growing tomatoes in raised beds, I had a lot of trouble with heirloom varieties. Now with the once-daily irrigation, all my tomatoes have done well. This Brandywine Pink grew particularly large leaves!!

Thanks for reading. Until next time, enjoy your summer and keep on growing!