Summer Garden Harvests & Simple Ways to Enjoy Them

Enjoy your summer garden harvests, from both flower and edible gardens, with these easy ideas to use them in your decor and cooking.

Do you wonder what you can harvest in July, from both flower and edible gardens? And simple ways to use them? Or just curious about what others are growing ?

I always am, so I thought I'd share a few things I harvested last weekend along with some useful tips and recipes for you to use them.

Summer Garden Harvests: Flowers

Have you heard of the slow flower movement? Similar to the slow food idea, it's about using in-season flowers that are grown in the US to help support our farmers who employ fair labor laws, versus international growers (the majority from South America).

Along with this - again similar to slow food - is growing and using blooms and greenery from your own yard, creating bouquets from what is blooming at any given time (you can follow #slowflower on Instagram to see wonderfully inspiring bouquets).

I love making simple backyard flower arrangements, either with just one type of blossom like hydrangeas or sunflowers, or gathering a few blooms and filling in with greenery.

Anything is fair game for these type of arrangements - twigs in winter, herbs in spring, and even vegetable leaves like celery and peas in summer.

This early July bouquet consists of yellow daylilies (they'll only last a day, but I enjoy them for that day and the next few days as they're more closed- if there are larger buds, they may open, too), pink buddleia, purple verbena bonaris, and greenery from some escallonia branches.

My simple, non professional, arranging tips:

• Clean all lower stems of leaves and recut at an angle, cutting at different heights.
• Add greenery stems.
• Add 'base' flowers (here the buddleia, since there were 3).
• Place 'focal point' flowers (daylilies) where you like - slightly off center is nice.
• Fill in with airy filler (verbena).
• Fluff and move until you like the arrangement.

Bonus Tip:

If your vase mouth is too wide and your arrangement is floppy, use a piece of scotch tape across the back of the container which makes your stems all come forward. No one will see it!

Summer Garden Harvests: Fruits & Vegetables

July is when you start to really reap the harvests from all your spring work planning and planting. You should still be harvesting peas, later spring planted lettuce, kale and other greens along with the first of summer's zucchini, basil, and other herbs.

There are still a few weeks of rhubarb harvests to enjoy and the berries will be coming on strong, especially blackberries and blueberries. If you've planted a few everbearing strawberries, you will even still be picking them, too.

Here are just a few simple ways use these - both fresh-eating and preserving:

• Spiced Lemon Skillet Chicken with Kale & Beans
• Healthy, Whole Wheat No Fail Zucchini Bread
• Sausage and Corn Stuffed Zucchini
• How to Freeze Snap Peas without Blanching {and Snow Peas, too!}
• Three Pea Salad with Feta & Walnuts
• Simple, Refreshing Berry Parfaits
• Classic Chef’s Salad
• Freezing Strawberries For Smoothies & Easy Berry Smoothie Recipe
• Frugal Homemade Pesto {with a Secret Ingredient}
• The Ultimate Rhubarb Guide: Grow, Harvest, Cook & Preserve

And by the end of July into August hopefully we'll all be harvesting beans, tomatoes, and peppers, among others.

Isn't the first of any of these just the sweetest? Of course by September, we're often just trying to find time to deal with all the produce, right?

But that's fine - eating seasonally brings it's own rewards. We find when we eat with the seasons we appreciate the produce more and the flavors seem richer.

By the time the spring asparagus needs to start ferning up (my fully grown asparagus is shown above, in some places topping out at 6 feet!), we're ready to move on to the next gift from the garden. And it's all good!

What are your harvests looking like now?