Come see what semi homesteading life for July 2025 here in the Midwest is like with this update! I’ll show you what is going on with the garden, in the kitchen, with the chickens, and with life in general.
July is always the thick of gardening season. The garden quickly goes from tidy and just starting to grow to producing like mad and overgrown by the end of the month! We’ve seen record rains here in Illinois, as well as hot temperatures to add to the mix. The good thing is I haven’t had to water much, but some plants are suffering a bit because of it.
With these updates, I hope to do more of a “journal” type of post at least once a month to keep you updated on life here. Hopefully, it will allow you to get to know the person behind these articles (me!) and how we run our semi homestead a bit more.
This will allow me to share the loads of photos I take on my phone instead of having them collect dust in my camera gallery. (You can also look for updates on Instagram if you want to follow along with me there, too.) I’ll also try to link to posts that might be relevant to what happened during that timeframe.
Hopefully, you enjoy getting to know a bit more about our life here in Illinois and how the homestead is going – Both the good and the bad!
Our July 2025 Update For The Semi Homesteading Life
Growing Plants
There is such a big change that happens between the early July garden and the late July garden! By the end of the month, the garden starts to get into that overwhelming, why-did-I-plant-things-so-close-together mode, but I love it!
Most of the crops have done well, aside from the green beans. We’ve had a rabbit that has been making itself at home, despite my electric fence and other efforts. It only seems to be dining on the green beans, so I gave up and admitted defeat for this year anyway.
We started with nine zucchini plants (yes, I’m crazy), but had a couple die suddenly. I looked for signs of squash vine borers or squash bugs and didn’t see any, so who knows. Where the two died, I planted a few more mounds of zucchini seeds to hopefully be able to get a second batch of plants going. The old zucchini plants usually start to peter out by early August.
Otherwise, the garden is flourishing with all this rain and the warmer temperatures! I love seeing it so full and producing so well by the end of the month! Although next year, I might skip planting the taller varieties of marigolds. They are well over four feet tall now and are taking over my tomato plants almost!
What We’ve Harvested – July 2025 Homesteading Update
Towards the end of July, the garden harvest really starts to ramp up. This is usually the case with green beans, but after the three failed attempts of replanting because of the rabbit, I gave up. Thankfully, we still have several jars of canned green beans saved from last year’s harvest. I just miss snacking on them fresh!
While we don’t have a ton of slicing tomatoes ready yet, the cherry tomato plants and the dwarf plants are in full production mode. We’ve also harvested lots of jalapeno peppers, nadapeno peppers, anaheim peppers, pepperoncini peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, and zucchini. I’ve also frozen several batches of dill to use whenever a recipe calls for fresh dill.
So far, our biggest tomato has been from a German Pink variety. The plants are from seeds I’d saved from a couple of huge tomatoes that were given to me by my neighbor last year. Many of our tomatoes have started to split due to our heavy rains, so I picked this one as soon as it started to blush. It weighed in at a whopping 1.4 pounds and was delicious on our BLT sandwiches!
Harvesting Garlic
Early in July, we harvested our fall-planted hardneck garlic. The scapes were cut back in June, but we had to leave the plants in the ground to allow the bulbs to grow and mature. Once the bottom few leaves turned brown, my daughter and I harvested the bulbs.
The 2025 Garlic Harvest 
Laying the bulbs out to dry. 
Our garlic on the left and the new that we purchased is on the right. All the cloves are the same size-wise. 
The seed head that grew at the end of the garlic scape. 
The two outside bulbs are ones we removed the scapes from while the one in the middle is from the plant we allowed to go to seed.
Overall, the harvest was a great success! Out of the 130 cloves we planted last fall, only two did not grow. I planted about 100 of my own garlic that I’ve been saving for the last several years and about 30 of a newly purchased batch. The cloves we’ve been saving each year produced much nicer, fuller bulbs. (You can see the difference in the clove size in the third photo.)
I also experimented with allowing a couple of garlic scapes to stay on the plants to see how they’d affect the growth of the bulb. It was neat seeing the flower change into a seed head. When we did harvest those couple of bulbs, they were so tiny in comparison to the rest of my harvest. So it’s definitely true that the energy and resources from the plant go to the seed head as opposed to the bulbs. (See my photo for comparison above.)
Sweet Corn – The Good And Bad
We’ve definitely had some good and some bad when it comes to our sweet corn crop. We created three new in-ground raised beds in our garden this year with the goal of growing bulk crops like garlic and sweet corn. Two of the three beds were planted with corn, one a few weeks later so we’d have staggered harvests.
For the most part, the corn is doing amazing. We’ve had to battle a few pests like armyworms, Japanese beetles, and aphids. Thankfully, they’ve only messed with a few plants, so we’ve let nature do its thing. The worst issue has been the wind.
Where we live here in Illinois, we get a ton of wind with storms during the summer. It’s enough to flatten our crop, which it did a few times. As long as the corn stalks aren’t broken, we can usually prop them back up if they don’t do it on their own.
However, our last storm might have caused a bit too much damage. The corn isn’t quite ready for harvesting yet, so we aren’t sure if the ears were able to get pollinated or not. I think next year we are going to try something new to help keep the corn propped up, or at least stop it from lying totally flat again. There’s no shortage of experimenting and trying new things with gardening!
Some Recipes I’ve Made
Usually during the summer months, cooking takes a bit of a backseat to the kids and the garden. When I do cook, I try to feature fresh garden produce more. We also take advantage of all the great fruit that is in season.
I’ve been busy making zucchini bread using a family recipe of my late Grandma’s (my mom’s side). The kids always have these loaves consumed in a day or two! Of course, we also shred some zucchini for freezing so we can make more bread all winter long.
I’ve also been trying to freeze some of the other garden harvest, mainly tomatoes, broccoli, and dill. I can only eat so many cherry tomatoes, and I like to throw them into big batches of sauces once my slicing tomatoes start to come on. So to keep them from going to waste, I freeze them.
I also made a few batches of refrigerator dill pickles using a method of filling one jar at a time. It is great when I don’t have the time or enough cucumbers to do a huge batch of pickles.
Lastly, we’ve been using our zucchini whenever possible in meals. The other day, I made an oven-baked foil pack meal with Polish sausage and homegrown zucchini and new potatoes. It was so good!
Flowers Blooming Strong – July 2025 Homesteading Update
I am in LOVE with all of the flowers we have growing in the homestead right now! The different colors, textures, and varieties have been amazing. One of the bonuses of extending my garden this year is that it gave me more space for growing flowers.
I always try to incorporate different flowers in the vegetable garden to help draw in pollinators to pollinate our veggies. We’ve seen loads of bees, butterflies, and even hummingbirds visiting. The hummingbirds have especially been enjoying the nasturtium.
Not only do the flowers help attract pollinators, but they also just make me happy. I love to see the bright colors amongst all of the greens in the garden. I’m trying to grow a few perennials this year, as well as annuals that should reseed themselves. It will be interesting to see how next year goes.
Miscellaneous Pictures
As usual, I’ll leave you with some miscellaneous homesteading pictures for the last of our July 2025 update. I take SO many different pictures throughout the month that it’s hard to get them all on just one post. That’s where this category comes into play, since I can do a photo dump at the end of my updates.
One of the things we did this month was attend our local county fair. My daughter and I entered a few items this year. It was the first time I’ve done that since I was a kid!
We ended up having pretty good results! A couple of my favorites were getting first place in the “Chocolate Chip Cookie” division with my Sourdough Discard Chocolate Chip Cookies With Brown Butter cookies, as well as first place with my Old Fashioned Divinity in the “Divinity” division! I also had a photo get second for the “Single Bloom” division. (Side note, I removed the info from the ribbons that had the name of the county as well as the town.)
Besides the fair, we are already starting to deal with having chicken feathers everywhere! A few of our hens have started molting. I suppose it’s better to start the process now when it’s hot out as opposed to later during winter!
Lastly, I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of the garden looking in its prime. By the next homesteading update, the garden will look a little worn and tattered, so I want to enjoy the July 2025 garden as much as I can for now!
Until next time, thanks for stopping by!
– Chelsea