The Modern Victory Garden

I was thinking about doing the big potato patch dig over the coming long Labor Day holiday weekend, but the weather forecast has changed my mind for me.   It looks like waiting one more week will provide much better odds of doing this job in dry conditions (which is preferable).   Instead, I am hoping to process some dilly green beans and a batch of dill pickle relish.   At this point, I have frozen all of the green beans we should need for winter use, so now I can use the last harvests from the fading bush bean patches to do some dilly green beans.   In addition, the cucumbers have a bunch of small fruit on the vine that should mature to readiness by the end of the weekend, providing enough to do a batch of dill pickle relish.             

The fall spinach patch has really taken off with the rain and cool weather we have had for the past several days.   We should be able to enjoy fresh baby spinach salads again very soon.

In case you are wondering, that’s a pumpkin vine you see growing over the top corner of that patch.   The pumpkin vines are taking over the garden once again this year.   I quit trying to corral them years ago and have learned to just relax and marvel at their vigorous growth.   Deep in the tangle of the three sisters planting areas are quite a few pumpkins that are starting to show early signs of coloring up.           

I am looking forward to laboring this coming long holiday weekend to get some canning accomplished!

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in so many different regions.   Check it out and join in!   

This week was not a particularly heavy harvest week but I had surplus green beans, which I froze, and the rest of the harvest was a nice variety of items.   I picked several Siletz tomatoes that had broken color that I brought into the house to finish ripening.   The zucchini are still producing at a nice pace but nothing like what they were pumping out earlier in the summer.   The cucumbers are steadily increasing in production and if the weather does not go too cold too soon, I should get a good harvest out of them before the summer garden season concludes. Harvested the first two small ears of corn this week as well.   

Two crops that are getting a second wind but were not in my harvests this week are the celery and the rhubarb.   The rhubarb was not thriving this spring and so I did not harvest very much from it, but it has bounced back with a vengeance and is looking really good.   I plan to harvest some soon to make a rhubarb pie. 

The celery is also waking up and putting some more new growth on.   I will be harvesting more of this soon as well – to finish stocking up my freezer supply.

I did not get pictures of all the harvests this week, but here is a good portion of them. 

Harvest totals for the week of August 23rd through August 29th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Green Beans 4.75 lbs
• Carrots 0.25 lbs
• Corn 0.25 lbs
• Cucumbers 0.75 lbs
• Lettuce 0.25 lbs
• Peppers 0.25 lbs
• Potatoes 1.75 lbs
• Tomatoes 6.25 lbs
• Zucchini 2.75 lbs

Total For Week 17.25 lbs

Total Year To Date 175.50 lbs                          

We now have two hens laying regularly and we harvested 11 eggs this week.   I noticed another young hen trying on one of the nest boxes for size today, so I would not be surprised if we get a third producing shortly.

Happy Gardening and Harvesting!                 

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in so many different regions.     

The bush beans have taken center stage and gave me several good pickings over the course of the week.   Some of it was eaten immediately as part of our evening meals, but the vast majority of them have been blanched and frozen for winter use.   The runner beans and pole beans are starting to produce now too and should be really productive just about the time that the bush beans fizzle out for the season.

Thankfully the zucchini seems to be slowing down quite a bit.   The plants must have been reading my mind, as I was actually giving serious thought to just pulling them up and planting another fall crop so I would not feel so guilty about not using all that we were harvesting.   I was running out of people to give them to and getting tired of eating them at every meal.   Now that they have slowed down though I will keep them in place, as the lighter harvests are just right for our needs.    Coming along nicely this week were the cucumbers, which are starting to provide a steady and increasing harvest. I am expecting in the coming week to be able to harvest enough pickling cukes to do a batch of our favorite dill pickle relish next weekend.                         

Some of the tomatoes really want to ripen up but our brief bit of warm weather last week quickly cleared out and we got quite chill and damp again. I still managed to get one good ripe tomato this week, and have several more breaking color such that if the weather warms up for the first part of this coming week (as forecasted), I should get several ripe ones in a hurry. There is a sizeable amount of full sized tomatoes on the vines that have not broken color yet, but look ready to anytime.   Just a little warmth and sunshine is all it will take to move these along to ripening.                     

Harvested some more potatoes this week too for fresh eating needs.          

I did not get pictures of the few strawberries we harvested or the kale that I harvested for the chickens to enjoy.             

Harvest totals for the week of August 16th through August 22nd (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Green Beans 8.75 lbs
• Berries 0.25 lbs
• Carrots 0.25 lbs
• Cucumbers 1.25 lbs
• Kale 0.25 lbs
• Potatoes 3.75 lbs
• Tomatoes 0.25 lbs
• Zucchini 2.00 lbs

Total For Week 16.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 158.25 lbs        

We now have two hens laying eggs and we got 6 eggs for the week -  primarily from just one of the girls, but the second one started contributing on Sunday and I expect our egg production is about to start climbing soon too.       

Happy Gardening and Harvesting!                     

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Last Sunday we did our annual berry-picking trip to Graysmarsh Farm in Sequim Washington.   It’s a beautiful farm sited right on the shoreline of the Strait of Juan De Fuca which makes it extra special because as you pick berries in the many different fields you can look towards the edge of the farm and view the sea and an occasional large ship passing by.   We pick, visit, eat lots of berries, and listen to other people nearby picking and talking too, and generally just enjoy being out of doors at a great location.   It’s a fun summer outing that always ends with us bringing home buckets of berries to go into the freezer for our winter supply.   It’s also becoming a tradition to stop at a great little deli located on the way home to get some lunch and/or ice cream.   This year the temps were in the mid to upper 90’s so we made a point to get there right as they opened and worked hard to try and wrap up before the worst of the heat set in for the day.   We had two primary harvests we wanted from the day – blueberries and raspberries.   The loganberries were also on but we passed on those and used our time to focus on the two berries we really want to have stocked up in the freezer.   First stop the blueberry fields.        

The bushes were loaded with beautiful ripe berries.                    

We picked blueberries from 10 am until 12:30 pm and then headed to the raspberry fields just as the temps climbed to a sweltering level.   No photos of the raspberry fields as we were driven to get the picking done before the heat got any worse.   At 1:30 we had picked all we had set out to do and paid for our harvest ($2/lb) and headed home.   Ice cream was definitely the order of the day for our treat stop on the way home!                      

Here’s the harvest bounty we brought home - twenty-four pounds of blueberries and ten pounds of raspberries.                              

These were frozen on cookie sheets until frozen solid and then put into gallon zip lock freezer bags so that they were loose and can be easily scooped out as needed.   We got 4 full bags of raspberries and 6 full bags of blueberries.    

There is some harvest bounty happening in our modern victory garden this week as well.   The bush beans are hitting their peak production.   I picked both beds Tuesday evening and got two full colanders (five pounds) which I blanched and froze before heading off to bed that evening.           

There will be a couple of big pickings before the bush beans fizzle out, but right behind them the runner beans and pole beans are coming along and will step right in to fill the gap.   The cucumbers are giving me increasing amounts with each passing day as well, but the temps are dipping down again and I would not be surprised if they stall out for a while as a consequence.   In the meantime, we are enjoying the cukes we do get as refrigerator dill pickles – which are getting eaten almost as fast as I put them into the jar of solution.     

I hope your week is going well and that you are getting some time in your garden too.         

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to look at what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in so many different growing regions.                          

This week the green beans were ready to start harvesting.   I picked a couple of small harvests of them for evening meal prep, and then did a larger picking on Saturday, which was blanched and put in the freezer.   Still getting a tremendous amount of zucchini and amazingly enough - crisp sweet lettuce!  Weighed the onions on Sunday that I harvested the prior Sunday.  They were drying down all week and are now ready for storage and weighing.    I am pretty sure I picked a tomato this last week as well, but never got it recorded or took a picture of it so it is missing in action.

I did not get pictures of all the harvests, but here is a good portion of them.  

Harvest totals for the week of August 9th through August 15th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Green Beans 2.50 lbs
• Carrots 0.25 lbs
• Cucumbers 0.25 lbs
• Lettuce 0.25 lbs
• Onions 9.25 lbs
• Potatoes 1.00 lbs
• Zucchini 4.25 lbs

Total For Week 17.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 141.50 lbs                                  

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

It’s the middle of August and I have a tomato patch filled with lots of GREEN tomatoes.

The Siletz tomatoes growing in containers have been providing some occasional ripe tomatoes but even these have slowed way down recently due to a prolonged spell of rainy and cool weather.   Luckily, the weather has warmed back up today and is forecasted to stay that way for at least a four-day period, so there is some hope that the Siletz will begin ripening up again soon and that the green tomatoes might move along towards ripening as well.   It is worrisome though that we are so far into the summer season and this far behind on the tomato crop.   The tomato plants are starting to show signs of age and disease as they are want to do late in the summer season.   On various plants there is leaf curling, on yet others some lower leaf yellowing, and the Siletz tomatoes have some grey mold and fungus problems.   In an effort to keep the diseases at bay for as long as possible and encourage the plants to shift energy into fruit ripening, I did a hard prune on the large tomato patch today. 

This is the patch as I was just getting started on the pruning this morning.   I had removed the yellowed and blotchy looking leaves from the lower portion of two of the Early Girls.                          

I worked my way down the bed removing problem looking leaves and stems, and cutting the growing tips off of the tall vines so that they would quit growing skyward and perhaps put more plant energy into the fruit ripening process.   I wiped my garden snips with disinfectant often and washed my hands with antibacterial soap and water frequently as well – so as not to spread potential diseases or fungus problems from plant to plant.   Here’s how it looked when I finished. 

After I was done with the pruning work, I watered all of the tomatoes thoroughly because the weather is indeed going to be quite warm for a few days.   The combination of pruning, deep watering, and a really warm sunny day – seemed to perk the patch up tremendously.                           

This is the time of year where the potato patch starts looking really awful as it goes into the vegetation die back phase.   The earlier maturing potatoes are further along in the die off process than the later maturing Russet Burbank, but all of them are withering down at this point and in about three weeks, they will be ready for the big lift of the potatoes for storage.                           

While most of the garden crops have been really late this year, the potatoes are actually right on schedule.   My initial digs into the patch for fresh eating potatoes has been quite encouraging.   I think the John Jeavon’s planting method I used this year is going to prove quite productive, but only the final big harvest and weigh in will tell.                               

In the previous picture you may have noticed a large patch of beans growing to the left of the potato patch.   That is the patch of Dark Red Kidney beans and they are coming along nicely.                                      

The purple podded bush beans are producing now too and I picked a nice large colander of them today which I later blanched and then froze.   Picked a few more yellow zucchini to add to my growing pile of zucchinis in the fridge as well.             

I am getting a few cucumbers off and on now too.   Not enough to do anything serious with but I have been slicing them up and dropping them into the refrigerator dill pickle solution and gobbling them up almost immediately afterwards!    

I am hoping to do some berry picking at a local u-pick farm tomorrow - to freeze for our winter use.   We have strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries ripening on our home plants, but they are getting eaten as fast as they ripen and never even make it into the house for weighing.   Its going to be a hot one tomorrow so we will be getting it done early before it gets too hot to be out picking.   It’s a good thing they do not weigh us before and after we do the picking as I think we end up eating almost as much as we take home every year!                       

Keep Cool                  

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week. It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in many different regions.                 

I really was not very good about taking pictures of the harvest this week for some reason.   In addition, the harvest weight totals is understated because it does not include the onion harvest.   I pulled all of the onions Sunday afternoon but will not weigh them until the tops have dried down and can be removed.   I did not get pictures of very many of the harvests, but here is what I did manage to capture.

There are four types of onions in this harvest - red and yellow storage onions, Candy and Walla Walla sweet onions.   I am not pleased with how small the red and the Walla Walla onions ended up being.  The storage and Candy onions were small to medium sized which was an okay harvest.  

Harvest totals for the week of August 2nd through August 8th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Carrots 0.25 lbs
• Cucumbers 0.25 lbs
• Herbs (mostly dill) 0.25 lbs
• Lettuce 0.25 lbs
• Onions 0.50 lbs
• Potatoes 1.75 lbs
• Tomatoes 1.00 lbs
• Zucchini 4.50 lbs

Total For Week 8.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 123.75 lbs                                

I mentioned in a recent blog post that I had hand pollinated the pumpkins to get fruit set in the absence of very many bees.   I received an email asking about this process from a reader and I thought it might be good to just show how it is done for the squash family plants by posting about it.                     

First, you need to have both male and female plants flowering.   The male flower is on a stem and looks something like this.                     

The female flower can be identified because it will have an immature fruit formed under the flower, which looks something like this.        

To hand pollinate I use a large soft makeup brush, designed for applying blush or powder foundation.                           

I use the brush to swirl and swish around the inside of the MALE flower, applying enough pressure that the soft bristles firmly contact all parts of the flower.                  

The result is a brush loaded with pollen from the male flower.                 

I then swirl and swish the pollen loaded brush around the inside of the FEMALE flower, applying enough pressure that the soft bristles firmly contact all parts of the flower.          

That’s all there is to it!   If you are trying to save seed then you will need to use a new (sterile) brush and use isolation techniques (such as bagging the flowers) to keep the seed pure.   However, I am usually pollinating just to get fruiting to occur and so I generally just use the same brush all the time.       

Laura

Kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in many different regions.       

This week I harvested the last of the spring planted broccoli (all side shoot production), the first Russet Burbank potatoes, swiss chard, lettuce, onions, a couple of tomatoes, and lots of zucchini.   I also harvested some sugar snap peas, which will be the last from these plants as I am now letting them set seed.   I did not get pictures of all the harvests, but here is a good portion of them.    

Harvest totals for the week of July 26th through August 1st (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Broccoli 0.50 lbs
• Lettuce 0.25 lbs
• Onions 0.50 lbs
• Peas (sugar snap) 0.25 lbs
• Potatoes 2.25 lbs
• Swiss Chard 1.00 lbs
• Tomatoes 0.75 lbs
• Zucchini 6.25 lbs

Total For Week 11.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 115.00 lbs                       

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Tomorrow I will be flying to Pennsylvania to spend some vacation time with my daughter.  I will be returning home afterwards alone, as she will be staying on with a friend until it is time to move into the dorms and begin her first year of college life at Lehigh University.   In order to avoid thinking about this too much, I have kept myself incredibly busy over the past several days getting things taken care of ahead of time as much as possible.    

I was off from work today to do some required shopping and errands and to get the garden in good order so my husband (who is staying behind to take care of the homestead and animals) won’t have to worry about it.   Throughout the afternoon and this evening, I have managed to get the entire garden and the container plantings thoroughly watered. That is quite an undertaking to water the entire garden in less than one day.  It is supposed to be reasonably warm all weekend and on into next week – so I wanted to be sure all of the plants were set to grow unchecked in my absence.   The other chore I got completed was the planting out of the kale and chinese cabbage transplants.   I tucked the chinese cabbages in and around the basil plants that are growing in the longest vertical grow bed.   This bed gets partial shade so hopefully the cabbages will grow well and not bolt from heat.   The kale was planted up in the retaining wall bed in the spot where the garlic had been growing previously.  

I have not shown you the tomatoes in the greenhouse for a while.   These are Celebrity tomatoes and they are growing quite well.                               

I lopped off the top most part of these plants last weekend because they were pushing up against the ceiling of the greenhouse.   At this point in the summer season, I don’t want these plants to continue vining, instead I want them to concentrate all energy to setting and ripening fruit.   Which is what they are doing.                      

Out in the main garden area there are two varieties of tomatoes that are racing ahead of all the others – Market Miracle and Siletz.   Daphne of Daphne’s Dandelions gave the Market Miracle seeds to me and I had some high expectations based on her glowing reports of this tomato.   It looks like those hopes were well placed as they are forming nice clusters of really good-looking fruits!                                      

The really heavy and early producers are the Siletz tomatoes.   I started these ultra early, coddled them through late winter, kept them in the greenhouse until the weather really settled down, and they are growing in big black pots which adds additional heat around their root systems.    All of that extra effort is proving worth it as the plants are loaded with fruit …                          

…. and today I picked the first ripe tomato from the Siletz plants.                  

I sliced it up and ate it still warm from the vine.   It was so good!   There are more coming along right behind this one and I am so ready for the tomato season to get underway.                                                   

I am not taking a laptop with me on my travels, so I will not be posting a “Harvest Monday” recap this week.   I will however be back mid week and will post an update on how the garden fared in my absence.   The zucchini is pumping out the fruits right now so I expect to have some monsters waiting for me when I arrive home.   I may have to break down and make some chocolate zucchini cake to use it up.   Have a great weekend, and I will catch up with all your comments when I get back.              

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s always fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in many different regions. 

This week I harvested plenty of broccoli, lettuce, potatoes, and zucchini for our daily meal prep and had enough broccoli to also freeze some for winter use and plenty of extra lettuce to share with some friends at work.   I did not get pictures of all the harvests, but here is a good portion of them.                    

Harvest totals for the week of July 12th through July 18th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).                                

Broccoli 2.25 lbs

Lettuce 3.00 lbs

Onions 0.50 lbs

Peas (sugar snap) 0.75 lbs

Potatoes 3.00 lbs

Zucchini 4.00 lbs                                        

Total For Week 13.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 96.00 lbs                   

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener