Summer Vegetable Garden Tour- Ohio 2026

Hello everybody and welcome to my garden. I wanted to share a garden update a little bit earlier, but the weather has just not been cooperating. We've been getting hit with tons of rain, heavy storms, high winds, but it looked like I had a short little window before the next group of storm fronts rolls through. So I wanted to get out here quick and get this filmed because I wanted to share with you all what has been going on in the garden. Now for anyone who's new to the channel, my name's Jenna and I'm gardening in the midwestern part of Ohio and it has been a wild summer so far. But I don't want to waste any time so let's jump right into the garden. First let me show you the garden at the very beginning of August. This was before all the rain started and we were coming off a very hot and dry July. And here's the view from the ground. I've got millet planted as a cover crop there. I think it's almost as pretty as an ornamental grass. Here is one of my all-time favorites, Sunny Hedge Sunflower Blend. I plant this one every year. It's a mix of different flowering types that are all around four feet tall. And I think the bees love it as much as I do. Sombrero Zinnia back here, another repeat in my garden every year. And I have Red Malabar Spinach planted on the trellis behind these zinnias, which looks like this as of today. Now this is a really cool vining, heat-loving green, which works great in a time slot when a lot of my other greens are struggling. More zinnias here, that's Upwar Rose. And this is my first planting of Summer Squash, which was an indeterminate type gray summer squash. It worked really well grown vertically up these t-posts and it made it a lot easier to scout for squash bugs. Speaking of which, a couple of you shared with me that you pop squash bug eggs with flame. And I was dubious at first, but then I tried it. And it is the most satisfying way to deal with this very annoying garden pest. Like these little eggs actually crackle and pop when you flame them. And this might leave a little mark on the leaf, but it doesn't really seem to hurt the health of the plant overall. Now up to the front part of the garden. I've been impressed with this cucumber so far. This is Provision, a pickling cucumber from Earthworks Seeds Breeding Program. Many of their other varieties have also done well for me in the past, including Galahad Tomato, Anna Melon, and a couple more that I'm growing this year. I'll share those in a bit. Now I do have cucumber beetles out and I have some damage on this plant, but despite that damage, these plants haven't succumbed to bacterial wilt yet. Which for a cucumber to make it this far into the season is always a win for me. A little peek at the medicinal herb garden, which is still a work in progress. This was the last of the carrots. I finished harvesting those just a few days ago, later than I normally would. Some late planted collards and kale and sugar cube cantaloupe. Here's my tunnel of plants. Again, this is the very beginning of August. I really should have cut out some of these volunteer castor beans, which I ended up doing later in the month because got way too crowded in here. Here is Juicebox Watermelon, another Earthworks variety. I had to support these with my son's old soccer socks. Not the prettiest, but it is working pretty well. The winter squash don't have to be supported. They have thicker, stronger stems than the melons. This is Ragosa Violina Butternut back here. And I'll show you later in the video how much bigger these have gotten in just a few weeks. Out of the tunnel, I've got spring planted kale, still going strong. Lots of volunteer castor beans. And I dug potatoes out of this area at the end of July. Back here, some tomatoes, including Solar Vortex from Wild Boar Farms. Now these plants look pretty good here, but you'll see in a bit, by mid-August, the non-stop rain and extremely high humidity has wreaked havoc on my tomatoes. These are all volunteer sunflowers that popped up where I had the compost pile last year. Another tomato, this is What You Want. They're beautiful and we're the first to ripen in the garden, but so far the flavor has been a bit lackluster for my taste. Now if you saw some of my earlier videos from the season, you know how much trouble I had with bush beans this year. But despite all my complaining, the ones that made it past the seed and seedling stage actually did quite well. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly went wrong, but I suspect it was simply the combination of pill bug feeding damage and seeds rotting in soil that was too damp. I'm really pleased with Redtail Bush Bean, a new-to-me variety this year, again from Earthworks. Really nice abundant pod set, and I love these big glossy beans. Blue Lake Superior also did well for me, and honestly at this point I'm a little sick of picking green beans. Sweet potatoes doing well here. They love the heat. This is Dunja Zucchini, which while it always does well for me, I feel like all of my zucchini and summer squash have been less abundant this year than they are normally. Has anybody else noticed this? This is back when I could still actually walk down this path before my sweet potatoes and winter squash took over. This is Aji de Colorado Alpino Pepper. Winter squash and watermelon through here. Shell beans. This empty spot was where my onions were. I've got this in cover crop now. And back here, several tomatoes, which I made the mistake of putting in tomato cages. Every year I swear that I won't put indeterminate tomatoes in cages, and every year I run out of room on my cattle panels and think, they'll be fine this time. They were not fine. Way too much plant for this cage. But this variety, and I will butcher this pronunciation, is Pomodoro Chioro Antico di Acquiterme. I'm going to put that up on the screen for someone who actually knows how to pronounce Italian. It's supposed to be a monster paste tomato, which some of these are pretty good size. I did have one big beautiful fruit at the bottom here that I went to pick and realized it had a giant army worm in it. They've been a major problem on and in my tomatoes this year. They make corn worms look like child's play. I've been using Bt, but they're so good at hiding down in the plants and in the fruit that it isn't always effective. So I've just been picking them off the plants and killing them as I find them. So let's head back up to the front and out of the main garden. Oh, this sunflower. This is Sorolla. I don't like this at all interplanted in my garden. It's not the most attractive plant, but it does make a glorious cut flower. I've been enjoying these bouquets in the house since this thing started blooming. My midnight marble hibiscus here. This isn't something I typically plant, but this has done really well for me and I think it's beautiful. The sunchokes or Jerusalem artichokes are blooming and I've got some watermelon that escaped through the fence here. I've used old tights to tie these up. And in the back garden, my first plot of corn was ready to harvest on August 6th. Now I did have a raccoon get into this plot and do a little damage, but I was able to live trap it using some canned fish as bait. And I didn't have any more trouble. I know lots of you love the old silver queen sweet corn, but this lovely new white variety is called Magnolia and it is so much tastier. Here is where the rest of my potatoes were. I harvested all of those and planted this with my fall transplants on August 10th. Now some of you asked about how to find room for fall crops in the garden. And one of my favorite tactics is following potatoes, onions, and sometimes garlic with fall brassicas and leafy greens. I'm planting kale here, but I've also got broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, collards, and kohlrabi in this plot. These were covered with netting immediately after planting because all of the cabbage worms, imported cross-stripe and loopers, are terrible right now. And my biggest planting of cucumbers is back here. I cannot keep up with picking these. The varieties here are Samurai, which I find to be a somewhat ironic name for an American slicing type, and Tasty Green, one of my old favorite Japanese slicing types. Lots of cucumber beetles on these plants, but like the provision, so far they've yet to succumb to bacterial wilt. Not too shabby for August is what I was thinking at this point. And then the rain started on the 7th and we've had rain every day since. That's pretty unusual for August in Ohio. Now I haven't been hit nearly as hard as some areas of the state. No flooding or tornadoes here, but I did lose quite a few of my tall castor beans and sunflowers, and some of my other plants were knocked over in heavy storms. But I'm lucky because it could have been so much worse. Of course, nearly all of my sunchokes were knocked over. This seems to happen every year. I need to find a better way to support them. But as they were, I ended up having to cut most of them off because they were laying on top of my watermelons and squash. So I got to work cutting and clearing fallen plants, cleared some of the overgrowth from my plant tunnel while I was at it, and started clearing out plants that I no longer needed, like this early bean planting that had really slowed down in production after about four or five pickings. Despite the rain and disease and insect setbacks this year, the garden is quite beautiful. Well, at least I think it is. And here it is today, or August 17th. I might not get this posted till tomorrow. While my garden didn't sustain too much damage from the heavy winds and storms, what has been disheartening is the disease, particularly on my tomatoes. Between unrelenting rain, humidity that is actually higher than the Amazon rainforests, no joke, I checked, we've been over 90% humidity more often than not this month, and my overcrowding issues, because everything has just rampant growth this year. Disease is going crazy, and almost every fruit that was ripe or close to ripe in the last week has been splitting as well due to the excess moisture uptake from the excessive rain. Because of this, it's also been an excellent year to really see which tomatoes are the most disease resistant. So far, Solar Vortex, Brad's Atomic, Rosedale, Whatcha Want, Shadow Boxing, and Laroma 4 look the best. Now it's definitely not best practice to be out here doing anything with these plants while they're wet, but again, I haven't caught a break with the rain, and if I don't get these harvested, everything is going to split. So I'm just out here picking from wet plants. I am lucky that the melons haven't split with all the rain. I just harvested the first of my sugar cube cantaloupes. This one is always a favorite. And this, clearing out some of this tunnel definitely helped. I can actually walk through here now. This is the first juice box watermelon. And spoiler, I did take this in the house immediately after filming this and devoured half the melon. It was delicious. I mentioned this rugosa violina butternut squash earlier, but look how much bigger it's gotten in just a few weeks. Some of these are even nearing harvest time already. Peppers, thankfully, are one plant that is looking pretty fantastic this year. Now, depending where you're gardening, you might have noticed that your peppers, tomatoes, and other fruiting plants, like the summer squash I mentioned earlier, weren't setting fruit. In my garden this year, due to the sustained heat in July, so daytime temperatures above 85 to 90 and nighttime temperatures not dropping below 70, many of my fruiting plants aborted their blooms. When the temperatures finally dropped a little, they started setting again like normal. So many of my peppers and tomatoes are a little later to ripen this year than normal. Everything else seems to be coming along despite the weather. I've got plenty of winter squash growing in here, my fall transplants are loving the rain, and my cucumbers continue to be productive. Now, I also mentioned in a previous video the crazy insect pressure I'm experiencing this year. While this continues to be the case, I'm not only seeing more and different insect pests, but I'd say more insect life in general. Beautiful butterflies and moths, all kinds of bees, including native bees which I love to see, and wasps, spiders, beetles, and critters of all types. And seeing this kind of just reminded me that more than just providing food for my family and I, this garden is also providing habitat and an ecosystem for a lot of the creatures around us. So while some things are struggling this year, and it has been a relatively frustrating year in general, stuff like this really makes it worth it for me in the end. So that pretty much wraps up what has been going on in my Ohio garden. But as always, I'd love to hear from you all. Drop a line in the comments below and let me know what has been going on in your gardens. And if you enjoyed today's video, please consider subscribing to my channel Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.