The Modern Victory Garden

The Modern Victory Garden site and blog was quiet all of last week because I was in Washington DC on business.   Upon returning, I found a backlog of urgent items to attend to - both at home and at work.   Consequently I have barely been out to the garden in about a week's time and am desperately looking forward to the coming weekend.   The good news is that it will be a long one for me as I have Monday off from work (Columbus Day) and I do not have any appointments or commitments to keep so the weekend is mine.   I intend to make good use of the time and not only get some garden and home time in, but to also get out and enjoy the fall colors.   Our local trees have turned color virtually overnight this year.                             

One of the tasks I want to get to this weekend is to pick the sugar snap peas (Cascadia) and harvest the saved seed.    A while ago, I cut the plants from their roots but left the vines on the support structure to encourage them to finish the drying down process.   It has been almost two weeks since I did that and the pods and vines appear ready to be removed.                     

I will shell the seed peas and let them dry out of the pod for another week or more before packaging them up for storage.    I have runner beans and bush beans that I am also hoping to save seed from.   Unfortunately, the plants do not seem to want to dry down and the rainy season is fast approaching.   I will assess the progress of these plants this weekend and if they are far enough along, I will do a similar root pruning process to encourage the final dry down process.                   

You may recall that early last spring (mid March) that I added several new fruit and berry plantings to my garden to expand the fruit production.     These additions were only possible because I expanded the total size of the garden, which provided room to add more perennial plantings.   Specifically, I added more rhubarb (2 plants - Valentine), a whole new bed of strawberries (32 plants - Ozark Beauty), a raspberry patch (10 bare root plants - Heritage), bush pie cherries (10 bare root plants - Hansen), and a bed of cranberries (8 plants - Stevens).   Most all of these plantings are doing really well.   The only losses I incurred were that 4 of the 10 raspberry plants never broke dormancy and I will need to replace them.   I may check my local nursery this weekend to see if they carry plants of this variety so I can do a fall planting.   If not, I will order some next spring and do the replacement process.   The raspberries that did make it are producing their first light crop right now.   Not a one is making it into the house to be weighed though - as we just eat them right in the patch.   The bush pie cherries have gotten a good start and are turning into healthy bushes.           

They should produce their first harvest next year.   The cranberries and rhubarb plants have also gotten a really good start and should be providing their first harvest next year as well.   The new strawberry bed is robust and has already provided me with fruit in their first year.                            

All in all, the additions are poised to add quite a bit of fruit production for me in 2010.                                                     

Things I am hoping to get done this weekend include:

• Harvest sugar snap pea seed, shell, and begin drying
• Possibly root prune the bush bean and runner beans - seed saving
• Mix the compost piles
• Water the container plantings
• Fertilize and lime the lawn
• Clean the wood stove chimney/stove pipe
• Clean the gutters out

Are you planning to work in the garden this weekend?

The garden is definitely transitioning towards fall.   There is still an abundance of traditional summer crops to harvest, but they are starting to wind down and the fall crops are really coming into their own.   Some of the items I am happy to see return after a summer hiatus are lettuce and spinach.                                                

This is the bed I planted several weeks ago of lettuce and spinach and they are just about ready for the first light harvests.                      

Nothing was done in the garden this weekend, as I was away on a trip to Spokane to see my parents.   On the drive home today, I stopped at the large produce barn in Thorp Washington and purchased a big box each of pears and peaches.   The pears are quite green yet, and will hold for several days while they continue to ripen.   The peaches however, will need to be processed either tomorrow or Tuesday evening as they are beautifully ripe and will not hold for very long.                

After I got home tonight, I checked on the garden and found everything in good order - but I definitely need to water the recently seeded bed of spinach (the over wintering patch), as it has germinated but the soil is drying out.                                

The sugar snap peas (Cascadia) that I am letting set seed are getting closer to being ready to harvest for seed.   The pods are swollen with plump seed peas and the vines are beginning to die back.                               

The pumpkin seeds I saved last weekend are getting well dried but I will continue to let them dry in the open air for another week before I package them up for storage.   The other seed saving items are the bush beans (Jade) and the runner beans (Sunset).   Both of these are making good progress but they are not as far along in development as the sugar snap peas.   Since I am planning to grow a different variety of pole beans next year, I am not going to save any seed from this year's crop.   

Glad to be home after being away for a few days and expect I will be busy in the coming days catching up on garden tasks and canning those purchased pears and peaches.

Started the day off by tackling my least favorite chore - using the weed whacker to clean up the garden walkway areas.   Got started around 9:30 am and wrapped it up around 11:30 am.   While not my favorite task, it is probably the most rewarding because the garden always looks so good afterwards.    Today was no exception.    I was totally filthy, physically tired, and in real need of a shower afterwards - but what an improvement in how the garden looks.        

You can see in the last picture that the long bed (farthest left) of early and mid season potatoes is in the process of dieing back.   In about a month, it will be time to dig them up for storage.   The late season (Butte) potato bed is going strong though.                                                                                         

Today I started Walla Walla sweet onion seeds in six big flats.        

These will be planted out in the garden in October to over winter -  to produce really large sweet onions for next summer's garden.     The seed starting trays were placed in the greenhouse for now.           

I cleaned up the weeds in the greenhouse today and also removed the storage onions that were in there curing and drying.   The withered tops were removed from the onions and then they were placed in mesh bags for storage.                      

There were 8 lbs of onions after the tops were removed - 4 lbs per bag.  

I also picked the pole beans, runner beans, and the bush bean patch. Ended up with 3 ½ pounds of green beans for the effort.                        

I plan to process and freeze these tomorrow evening after work.   The bush bean patch is starting to wind down, so I intend to quit picking it from here on out and let the remaining bean pods go to maturity for seed saving purposes.   The variety I grew is Jade, which has been very productive, early, and quite tasty.   Since it is open pollinated, I will save seed from this patch and use it next year.   I also picked sugar snap peas (Cascadia) again today.   I am also going to quit picking from these plants as well - so that the remaining pods can go to maturity and provide saved seed for next year's planting needs.                           

The corn patch is growing well and should enjoy the forecasted warm weather this coming week.                                         

I harvested several ears of corn today for tonight's evening meal.           

In addition to the corn and sugar snap peas, I also harvested some tomatoes, cucumbers, and an onion for tonight's dinner.                     

The cucumbers, onion, and a few of the tomatoes were combined with some halved pitted kalamata olives and garlic infused vinaigrette dressing to make a nice summer salad.                                    

Behind the salad is a loaf of no knead bread that was baked earlier in the day and was cooling on the counter.                       

The weather forecast for the next several days is calling for warm and dry.   I hope it brings a flush of tomatoes to ripe status so I can get the tomato canning efforts underway next weekend.

The garden in late May is truly something miraculous and exciting. The flush of new growth is intoxicating and the hint of harvests to come is tantalizing.  I find myself drawn to the garden every moment that I am not otherwise occupied.                        

Early this morning before getting ready for work, I did my usual garden "walk about" to open up the greenhouse for the day and check on everything. It's just an excuse really - to sip my coffee while enjoying a quick stroll through the various garden bed areas.  It was still somewhat dark because of the early hour and because of the heavy cloud cover. We had a very strong rainstorm move through the previous evening and the remnants of the clouds were still overhead.  The heavy rains had left the garden beds very well soaked. There is something about rain that irrigation watering just cannot match.  It seems like there is a significant increase in the vitality of plants after a heavy rain that just never occurs after a manual watering.  I wonder if any of you have ever noticed this?                                 

While out this morning, I took a few pictures. First, let me share with you how the broccoli, kohlrabi, and early cabbages are doing.  Here's the first bed that was planted up with these cole crops.        

The plants towards the front of the photo are the "Ruby Ball" cabbages. Behind them are the kohlrabi and then the first round of broccoli. This crop of broccoli are starting to develop the main head.                       

The second crop of broccoli is in another garden bed close by - and is virtually caught up with the earlier planting.                                                

The potatoes are zooming along and I am having to back fill soil into the trenches almost daily. The storage onions are suddenly getting a lot of top growth to them as well.                            

Remember the overwintered spinach that I decided to allow to go to seed for seed saving purposes? Well take a look at the seed stalks it is sending up! I am hoping to collect enough seed for both the fall planting and next spring's planting as well.                        

Finally, I want to show you how the main pea patch is doing and give you a status report on the horizontal pea trellis support I am trying for the first time this year. If you recall the trellis system and patch looked like this after I did the initial planting up on March 14th.                   

The peas took quite a while to germinate but now (approximately two months later) this is how the patch is doing!                   

If you look closely at this photo you can see two volunteers in that bed - a lettuce plant, and a potato plant. The peas (and volunteer plants!) are all thriving. When I put the horizontal trellis in place, I wondered if I really needed the second tier - but these plants are already up to the second level and grabbing hold.                                                                                            

These will start blooming and producing very soon.              

Looking ahead to the weekend, we have a string of sunny and warm days in the forecast and I am anxious to spend quality time in the late May garden.

On Saturday my in-laws were here on a visit and we spent the entire day at the Viking Fest celebration in Poulsbo. We had a great time and got too much sun (we are all a little pink!) and essentially nothing was done in the garden other than watering the tomato patch before we headed out for the day.                                

Today (Sunday) was devoted largely to the lawn-reseeding project. I will not regale you with how that all went except to say that I have a hard time putting so much energy and time into a purely ornamental garden project.   We did manage to finish the reseeding this afternoon and so that "to do" item can be checked off the list!                                                                  

This morning before we got started on the lawn project, I did get some garden work accomplished. The brussel sprouts, mid and late season cabbages, and the last round of lettuce starts - all needed to get into the ground. I found some open spaces here and there in the garden to plant the last of the lettuces, as I did not have a specific bed area open for them to go into. The mid-season cabbage ("Primero") was planted where the shallots were previously located.  I harvested the last of the shallots this morning to open up the space.  I put the late season cabbages ("Steins Late Flat Dutch") next to the "Butte" potatoes and the brussel sprouts ("Diablo") went into 2 of the 3 sections that were holding the overwintered spinach patch.   I pulled up the overwintered spinach that is going to seed from 2 sections leaving 1 full 4'x4' section that will be allowed to continue producing seed for collection.  I added a layer of finished compost to the opened up areas, spread a thin layer of organic all-purpose fertilizer, and then worked it all into the top few inches of soil.  I also took the broadfork to this planting area to aerate it.  After the bed was prepped, I planted out the brussel sprouts. Each plant got a copper collar for slug protection and a stake for later support when they grow very tall and are inclined to lean. Here's the bed after it was finished up:                                                                                   

While I was out in the garden I took a picture of the kohlrabi, which are starting to have their stem areas swell.  I think kohlrabi is such an interesting plant - it sort of looks like a little sputnik!  They are quite tasty as well as entertaining to look at.              

The elephant garlic is really getting big as well. The bottom most leaves are turning yellow. When all but the center leaves are died back then it will be time to pull them and dry them out.                       

All in all, it was a very productive day with most of it related to our front lawn project. I am truly hoping to have a less frantic pace for the coming long Memorial Day weekend. I am anticipating that I will need to blanche and freeze some spinach next weekend, so that will likely be my big project for one of the three days.   Other than that, no big items are planned and I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend.                                                     

I hope you were able to get outside this weekend and work in your garden too.

With each passing day, the evenings are getting warmer and are staying lighter for longer periods of time. I could not be happier! There is so much to do in the gardens this time of year and only so many weekends can be reserved 100% from other commitments and obligations. So getting some garden time in during the weekday evenings makes a huge difference. It is also obvious that the plants are responding positively to the increased solar strength and length of day. The growth rate on the spring crops has really sped up and I noticed this evening as I was harvesting from the patch of overwintered spinach - that it is showing signs that it would like to bolt to seed soon. I have decided to let it do just that and save the seed.  It is "Bloomsdale Savoy" which is an open pollinated variety and I have a few weeks before the brussel sprouts need to go into that bed. Even if the spinach seed saving is not completed by the time the brussel sprouts need to be planted, I can always just plant them with the spinach still in place (surrounding the transplants). I will keep you posted on how that progresses.

I have mentioned previously that several of the tomatoes have already begun to blossom. I took a picture of one of the "Stupice" tomatoes showing the nice blooms developing.

 I am encouraged by the vibrant new growth on the plants since I put them out in the garden bed. Keep your fingers crossed for me that we get a MUCH better tomato year in 2009 than 2008.

You may recall that I recently transplanted out the 2009 swiss chard seedlings ("Bright Lights"). These are the same seedlings that I actually thought I had done in at one point! Thankfully I was quite wrong about that and they have gone on to be quite healthy little plants. They are doing well in their permanent planting spot.

While these young starts are growing to a harvestable size, we still have the overwintered crop in containers in the greenhouse. And they are still producing wonderfully despite being almost a year old and having had countless hard harvests made from them!

These are such beautiful, delicious, and productive plants. If you have not grown swiss chard, I heartily encourage you to try them this year. I am particularly fond of the mild flavor and festive colors of "Bright Lights".

The celery starts are right next to the swiss chard transplants and they are also getting a good run on the growing season.

We had a tremendous celery crop last year and I am hoping this year's is good as well. I enjoyed having such a large amount of sliced celery in the freezer this past winter for daily cooking use.

The various succession crops of lettuce in the greenhouse are all pouring on the growth with the improved weather conditions and sun strength. We can hardly harvest it fast enough - even with a large salad just about every day for dinner.  Here's one of the containers of "Super Gourmet Blend".

This container needs harvesting (again).  Planning to have a huge green salad with our dinner tomorrow night - harvested from this planting.  I will probably stop harvesting from the overwintered spinach patch very soon (to let it go to seed) and focus on keeping up with the lettuce for a while until the weather warms up too much and they start getting bitter.

That's what is "growing on" in my modern victory garden this week. Hope you are enjoying some evening time in the garden too.