Our Summer Garden Updates (2025)
I have really been slacking on 2025 yard updates! Well, as far as blog posts go. I have been posting regular tours on YouTube, but I’ve been waiting for my “big” summer 2025 garden tour to put into post format.
It’s my favorite time of the year, taking photos to document everything. Mostly so I can remember what I planted where next spring!
Early-season growth
Speaking of spring, below is how things looked earlier in the season when the peas, lettuce, fava beans, and spinach were going strong.
Raised beds area
And not long after I took those spring photos, it was time to put in my summer vegetables. I really tested the limits of what I could pack into my raised beds this year, and I’m really happy with the results!
As a reminder, we have seven raised beds in various sizes. The two beds closest to the house have a cattle panel arch trellis between them, while the others have various sorts of growth supports that I can move around.
My biggest experiment this year was with my tomatoes. I decided to grow my pole tomatoes up bamboo stakes that I cut down and cured for longevity. And for my smaller Roma tomatoes, I used a-frame trellises.
And while tomatoes seemed to take forever to ripen this year with our cold and longer-than-normal spring, they ripened with a bang. I was drowning in tomatoes, especially Romas. I made a ton of soups and sauces to freeze.
I also grew a ton of Swiss chard this year since I find it tolerates the summer heat quite well. It isn’t a replacement for lettuce, but it does help bulk up salads a bit! And it’s very good just cooked in some chicken broth, olive oil, garlic, and hot peppers.
Speaking of, I grew ghost peppers this year. And a few other mystery hot peppers. For most of the hot peppers, I dehydrated them and ran them through a food processor to make hot pepper flakes. I have a ton that will probably last us a year!
Cucumbers, eggplant, and winter were also good producers this year. However, my pole green beans totally struggled along and produced next to nothing. Last year I could barely keep up with picking. This year—nada!
And the new variety of vertical summer squash (‘smooth criminal’) was just so-so. The fruits themselves were delicious, but I was reminded of why I had growing squash so much. Squash bugs and vine borers. I swear I will not be growing it again without the covering and hand-pollinating method.
My sunflowers went nuts this year, and I need to remember to grow fewer sunflower plants next year! Most of them were volunteer plants this year, and I didn’t have the heart to pull them. However, the Henry Wilde sunflowers just get so big and are a pain to take down. I’ll stick to 3 or 4 plants next year instead of 7 or 8 🙂
In-ground beds
Lots happening in the in-ground beds, too! I had lots of garlic growing in here over the winter. Just as they were nearing time to harvest, we put in sweet potato slips as well. The sweet potato foliage really took off and basically covered the area.
I’m thinking about doing a line of pole tomatoes here next year to try something new. We’ll see how I feel and how many plants I decide to start next spring.
And the asparagus really took off this year! We harvested a bunch, but I think next year will be the first year we can really harvest for several weeks. The plants are now very well established and ferned out beautifully this summer.
I also added a native passion flower vine here, too. Though I did eventually move that up to the side of the house where it will have a bit more room to spread. It’s an aggressive vine and needs some space!
And I took some leftover retaining wall stones from our front lawn conversion project to line the hill off to the side of the in-ground beds area. This mound was originally just a pile of dirt we needed to relocate after digging out our pond, but I turned it into a growing hill.
I had sunflowers, watermelon, hot peppers, and a few other assorted things here all summer. It gets decent light but isn’t as sunny as some other spots in the yard—that is, unless a plant can grow above the fence line like the sunflowers did!
And here is an aerial shot of the whole raised beds, in-ground, and greenhouse spaces. You can really see the sweet potatoes doing their thing here! I took this picture in early fall when I had already taken some plants out, too. It was an even fuller house before this.
The pond
We enjoyed the first full summer with the pond. So much so that I forgot to get really any photos. Just a few pics from mulching and spring planting. This area will look very different next year, though, since my husband decided to triple the size of the pond.
We removed the hard-shell liner we had in there and dug out a larger space. Then we laid a soft liner in it for a more natural look. We also made the waterfall bigger and enlarged the landscaping. More room for plants!!
I love the new pond (no pics yet), but it means I have to redo all of the landscaping. That’s okay, though…worth it in the long run! Hoping to have some beautiful pictures of that new space next spring.
Back beds & berry patch
Last fall we started putting in more berry bushes back in the new berry patch. This involved killing off a large area of grass through sheet mulching, a process that layers cardboard and compost or mulch (or both) to smother the grass and improve the soil.
The two areas in the photos below are separate, but we plan to eventually connect them. We have all of our fruit trees back here, including a peach tree, two plums, two paw-paws, a persimmon, and a hardy fig.
In addition to the trees, we have many blueberry, red raspberry, yellow raspberry, serviceberry, and gooseberry bushes. I’m so excited to see this area mature and develop into a fruit paradise!!
We’ll need to put up some raspberry trellising next year to support the maturing plants and do some more sheet mulching. But until then, I’m really happy with how this area is looking.
A few other things added
A few other things we added throughout the yard as we focus on growing more natives and edibles—
- More sunchokes along the fence line
- Two goji berry bushes around the pond and patio
- Two goumi berry bushes in the area up by the patio where we removed the invasive miscanthus ornamental grasses
- A hardy kiwi vine that I am PRAYING makes it through its first winter!
- More elderberry shrubs of different kinds throughout the front and back yards
And perhaps most exciting of all, we had a tree company come out and remove the Bradford pear we had in the back of the yard!! This really freed up some space by the shed. I plan to put a smaller type of oak in its space eventually.
And here is an aerial view of our yard this fall! We’ve already made some changes to this, though, with the pond and surrounding landscaping expansion. And I’m already brewing on some ideas for next year. Hard to believe this ALL used to be grass!
And that’s a wrap on the 2025 season.
