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

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

It was drizzling rain and cool today.   Not a great day to do too much in the garden but I did water the tomato and zucchini beds by running the soaker hoses for several hours in each of them.   They are covered by red plastic mulch and so even when it rains, I still need to do the weekly irrigation.   I had some helpers in the garden this afternoon as I was moving the irrigation water around and doing a few other odds and ends chores.                

The girls were out clearing the weeds in the walkways and occasionally stealing some turnip greens and kale whenever I was not vigilantly watching them.   All in all though they are generally well behaved and are allowed into the garden when I am out and about - so long as I am there to supervise.           

The second crop of strawberries is coming on.   I have harvested about four nice sized strawberries in the past day or so but I ate them right there in the garden so they have never made into my harvest totals or a picture.   Hopefully some of these green ones coming along will make it into the harvest recaps.    

One of the things I am working on currently is rooting out strawberry runners because I want to start a new bed of strawberries next year and take out the oldest one (now three years old).   Strawberry plants produce lightly their first year, heavily their second year, and then decline in production thereafter.   It is my practice to rotate out a bed after the third year and start a new one to replace it.   This year was my “in between year” in that one bed is now two years old and the other is in it’s third year, so I did not do any rotation or patch removal in 2010.   However, next year the oldest bed needs to go and a new one needs to be planted to replace it.   By rooting out the runners from my current patches and then over wintering them in pots, I save myself the expense of buying new starts.   As the runners form in the strawberry patch, I just clip them with my garden snips and then set them into very moist potting soil in a planter.    The trick is to keep them quite wet for the first week or so until they root out.   Once rooted out well, I will give them a side dressing of fertilizer and then give them routine care.   I have about half of the plants rooted out that I will need next year, but I will just keep adding them as they send out new runners until I have enough that are rooted out and growing well.   If all goes well, I will end up with around 30 to 40 starts, which is enough to properly plant up a new 8-foot by 4-foot bed.   

The cucumbers are starting to produce.   I picked one last night and another one this afternoon.   Taking the good advice of Daphne and Thomas, I decided to try refrigerator pickles this year so that I could make better use of these early light cucumber harvests.   It will be awhile before the plants start producing amounts at any one time sufficient to do a batch of my favorite dill pickle relish, so keeping a jar of dill pickle solution in the fridge allows me to just drop in a couple at a time as they mature.   Early this morning, I mixed up a simple solution of 6 cups of water, 3 cups of white vinegar, 3 tablespoons of canning salt, 3 tablespoons of sugar, a medium sized white onion sliced thinly, 1 very large clove of elephant garlic, and several fresh heads of dill plus chopped up fresh dill weed in a gallon glass jar.   The cukes were cut into spears and added to the solution and then all of it just went into the refrigerator.   I sampled two spears this evening and have to tell you that I think I prefer these to traditionally processed dills.   Heavenly!                   

I purposely made a very large batch of solution, so I would have lots of room to add cucumbers as they came available in the coming weeks.               

The bean patches are getting their groove on now and I expect to be harvesting beans in the very near future.   This is my second year of growing Sunset Runner beans.   I saved seed from these plants last year because they really performed well in my climate and growing region.   They will grow and produce beans in areas that are partially shaded - which is quite rare for most vegetables.   Unlike regular pole and bush beans though, runner beans require bees or other pollinators to complete pollination.   They grow just like pole beans but produce a much broader, slightly fuzzy, and more meaty bean – best picked while quite young as they get tough when older.                   

Can you spot my other regular garden helper in this photo?                

The flower on these beans is quite beautiful and it is almost worth growing them just for that feature alone.                                

The Pinto beans growing in the Three Sisters planting bed are just now flowering and I have yet to find any pods forming.   They seem to be growing just fine, but are lagging behind the other beans.   However, the Three Sisters plantings in general seemed to really take off last week.   The corn is tasseled and silks are formed; the pinto beans are flowering; and the pumpkins that I have hand pollinated have set some nice looking fruits.                      

The Dark Red Kidney bean patch is further along than the Pinto beans are.   It is a very full stand of bean vegetation now, flowering nicely and forming bean pods.   If you look closely you can see a volunteer crimson clover flower and a volunteer potato plant growing in and amongst the Dark Red Kidney beans.   

The Dark Red Kidney bean pods are forming.                               

The really pretty bean patches though are the Royal Burgundy bush beans.   I have two patches of this growing and although they were planted almost two weeks apart, they seem to have caught up to each other and are at roughly the same stage of maturity.                                       

I should be harvesting some of these purple-podded beans soon.   Too bad my various garden helpers won’t be pitching in to pick beans when the time comes!                

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Balancing all the parts of my life is always a bit of a challenge, but this week is one of those where I feel like I am running flat out from the moment I register the alarm clock is going off until I put my head down on the pillow again much later that night.   It’s a tough week because I was gone last weekend on a trip to see my mom, and so there are chores to do that did not get done while I was away.   In addition, we are in the process of selling my daughter’s car and attending to other matters in preparation for her leaving home and heading to the east coast.   The move out date is well in advance of actually starting school because she will be spending a month enjoying summer vacation at the home of a good friend before moving into her dorm and beginning college life.   It’s all good - but there is lots to get taken care of before she goes.   My time blogging recently has been severely abbreviated as a result.   There is a tremendous amount actually going on in the garden at the moment, but I have not been taking the time to chronicle a lot of it like I normally do, because of time constraints.   It should calm down soon and I look forward to doing some catch up posts to share with all of you how much things are progressing in the garden of late.                            

In general the garden is in an overlap phase at the moment.   Lots of spring crops putting out their last big push and summer crops just starting to come on line.   In addition to the pea patch harvest, which was completed on Sunday, I harvested a sizeable amount of broccoli and another big round of lettuces this week.   The broccoli is Premium Crop and it is the first time I have grown this variety.   I am favorably impressed with the large central heads and the prolific amount of side shoots.   We have been enjoying broccoli off and on for a while now, but on Monday I harvested a sizable amount of it and froze it for future use.         

I like to cut it into florets and pieces, blanch it for 2 minutes in boiling water, immerse in ice water to stop the cooking process, and then freeze it in a single layer on a foil lined tray before finally packaging it up in a gallon zip lock freezer bag for future use.   The tray freezing step helps to keep the pieces separated so that I can scoop out from the bag only what I need instead of encountering a solid frozen rock of produce.                                 

The lettuce patch growing under the cucumber trellis has been going wild too.   Last night I had to do a hard harvest of the entire patch to ensure I got the lettuces at their prime and to encourage the plant to produce new young growth.   I just about filled up the big laundry tub again with lettuces.              

The lettuce is remaining sweet and crisp.   I soaked and rinsed the lettuce in a sink full of cold water and then spun dry them in my salad spinner.   The washed and dry leaves were then placed in bags lined with a paper towel.   Kept one full bag for our own use and I will be taking two other bags in to work today to share with two co-workers.                                

I should be able to do a good update this coming weekend and cover a lot of the other things that are going on in the garden.   Until then, I hope you are having a good week and enjoying some time in your gardens 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 interesting to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in many different regions.                   

The pea patch was picked late on Sunday afternoon after I returned home from a road trip to Spokane.   I stripped the entire patch and got 13 pounds of peas which is just a little less from the same size bed last year.           

Before the harvest....                                            

And after the harvest...                                          

The three of us watched a movie Sunday evening and together shelled the peas.   We got 4 ½ pounds of shelled peas from the harvest.                  

I then blanched them for 90 seconds and bagged them up in gallon zip lock freezer bags – 2 ¼ pounds per bag.   These went into the freezer for winter use.                                                                

Harvest totals for the week of July 5th through July 11th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).                                    

Broccoli 1.25 lbs

Celery 1.00 lbs

Onions 0.25 lbs

Peas (regular) 13.00 lbs

Peas (sugar snap) 1.00 lbs

Zucchini 1.25 lbs                          

Total 17.75 lbs            

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

It finally smells like summer outside.   The temperatures warmed up dramatically today (20 degrees warmer than just two days ago) and when I stepped out of the office this evening I was greeted with that distinctive smell of summer – warm sidewalks, and lawns that are getting dry in the summer sun and are starting to smell reminiscent of a hay field.   It’s heavenly after such a prolonged period of cool, overcast, and wet conditions.                            

Things are heating up in the garden too.   The pea patch is almost ready for the big harvest.   I watered it well this weekend knowing that we were heading into a forecasted warm spell and I think the combination of sunshine and a good soaking will push the pod development into overdrive.   Unfortunately, my daughter and I will be traveling to Spokane this weekend for a visit with my mom and other family members and I will not get back until late Sunday afternoon.   My husband will be staying home to care for the animals and while he always helps me do the pea shelling process – it would be asking too much to have him do all of the pea harvest etc on his own.   They will just have to wait until Sunday or Monday evening after I return.    

The warmer weather is kicking the broccoli into high gear too.   I harvested a bunch of it this evening along with a few small onions – which went into a beef and broccoli stir-fry with teriyaki sauce and rice noodles.   I have lots more central heads and side shoots that will be ready for harvest over the course of the next several days.           

Monday I harvested more zucchini and sugar snap peas – which was also turned into a stir fry dinner, only this one was with chicken, sliced zucchini, sugar snap peas, in a sweet and spicy shanghai orange sauce and served with cooked rice.     

I also harvested a bunch of celery Monday.   Notice the red celery in the picture?    This is Red celery that was grown from seed provided to me by Dan at the Urban Veggie Garden Blog.  It's not brilliant red but it definitely has a blush to it!      

I use celery to cook with predominantly and like to keep large gallon zip lock bags full of frozen sliced celery in the freezer so I can scoop out what I need for recipes.   It’s very convenient and if you are cooking with celery, then frozen is just as good as fresh.   I slice the celery up and place it on a tray and freeze it solid before then placing it into the zip lock freezer bag.   This keeps the pieces separated so they are easily scooped out of the freezer bag.        

Celery, onions, and peppers do not require blanching before freezing - so processing them is very quick and easy.   I like to harvest celery throughout the season and just keep adding more of them to the zip lock bag until it is stuffed full.      

Please keep your fingers crossed for me that I return home from my short road trip on Sunday to find the Siletz tomatoes starting to ripen from the final arrival of summer and my peas just ready for harvest.                       

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

The strength and length of available sun is obviously ramping up significantly.   In addition, the arc of the sun in the sky has moved higher such that the sun is now starting to clear the tall trees that surround our property occassionally.     The greenhouse and back garden beds in particular are showing real appreciation for the infusion of solar energy.   The greenhouse plantings and trays of seedlings have just taken off this week.   In fact, I need to harvest the kale plantings soon and the onion seedlings really should be planted out into the garden this coming weekend.   A sure sign that spring has really arrived - is the rhubarb is up in force. 

I found the first spear of asparagus poking through the soil this past weekend too!    It’s small and does not show up well in a photo, but like the rhubarb it makes me happy as they are the first substantial crops of the early spring garden.      

The replacement raspberry plants were supposed to arrive on Friday but did not.   With my husband’s help we forged ahead despite that to largely finish up the raspberry patch rejuvenation project on Saturday.   The big thing still on the to do list (besides planting the replacement plants) was to construct the supports for the raspberry beds.   Together we got them constructed and installed in no time at all.    

Today, the raspberry plants finally arrived and I made a point to leave work on time so I could get home before dark and plant them up.   No pictures to share because it was getting dark by the time I finished, but they are all in.   Now the only task I have left to do on this spring project is to reinstall the drip irrigation hose down the bed of raspberries.   Hopefully these newest bare root plants will all break dormancy and help fill in the missing portions of the raspberry bed.         

It’s a good thing the early spring crops are taking hold and starting to produce.   The inventory of freezer items from the garden is getting down to a low level because we have been leaning on them so hard for months now.   The canned items are less depleted overall but certain items (like dilly green beans) have long been used up.   The pickled peppers on the other hand have been hardly touched.   They taste great but honestly, we prefer diced frozen (roasted and raw) peppers and I am having a hard time finding ways to work them into our menus.   If you have any great ideas to share on this – I would love to hear them.   The late fall/winter crops are essentially done for the year with the exception that I still have some over wintered carrots to harvest, and there are parsnips still in the ground too - but they are going to seed and need to just be pulled.   I think the preserved supply level was just about right this year and we have not been wanting for much of anything as a result.   The only storage/preserved crop that is running out far too soon this year are the onions.   2009 was a rather bad production year for onions for some reason.   We used up the storage onions a while ago and have been using my freezer supply of diced onions but they too are fast running out and the green onions in the garden and greenhouse are still too small yet to harvest.   We may have to actually reduce down (possibly even stop) the onion usage for cooking for a while.   Now that is a true hardship because I use onions in just about everything I cook it seems.   Hopefully the green onions will get a kick-start from the increasing sun energy and I will not have to endure the onion drought for too long.   To avoid having this problem in 2010, I am planting significantly more onions and hedging my bets by planting not only onions started from seeds, but also sets, and my usual multiplier onion patch as well.   Keep your fingers crossed for me that 2010 is a better onion year altogether.            

Got any good ideas on how to incorporate pickled peppers into our evening meals?

This year’s preserving efforts had a few new recipes and a return of some old favorites.   I thought it might be fun to do a follow up to the previous posts and let you know what my judgment is on how several items turned out. 

In the totally new to me category there was pickled jalapeño peppers and spiced red cabbage relish.   We just opened the first jar of the pickled jalapeño peppers this evening and gave them a try.   Wow!   Those turned out very good.   I am glad I added the crushed red pepper flakes to the recipe because the peppers were not very hot this year and the red pepper flakes added a really nice heat.   This recipe (as modified by me) earns big thumbs up.   Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the spiced red cabbage relish.   I opened the first jar of this several weeks ago and could not even finish the first spoonful.   Yuck.   This recipe earns a big thumbs down and I am going to have to just empty the remaining jars out before someone injures themselves trying to eat some of it.   Yikes!                      

In the old favorites category we had dill pickle relish, pickled beets, and dilly green beans. True to form, these old standbys delivered to expectations.   I have to say though that I had forgotten how much I love dilly green beans. Once a jar is opened, it gets consumed almost immediately.   Nothing like a crisp croccantini flatbread cracker with a schmear of fromage blanc and then topped with a crisp dilly green bean. The spicy heat of the bean is complemented by the smooth creaminess of the cheese.  Heaven.           

So there you have it.   With the exception of the horrific spiced red cabbage relish, the rest of the specialty preserved items turned out wonderful.   If you used that spiced red cabbage relish recipe because I posted it…. you have my most sincere apology!

Fall has arrived with a grand flourish.   The Japanese maple trees in the front of our place have turned a flaming red - almost glowing in the gloomy overcast conditions we have been experiencing for the past several days.     

The garden crops are now almost exclusively fall and winter items with the exception of the pepper plants that continue to flourish in the protection of the greenhouse.   Yesterday I pulled the first of the 2009 parsnips and a few carrots to fix for dinner.                                                      

These were sliced up and sautéed in butter until tender and sweet.   Not the biggest specimens but I was trying to do a little thinning and pulled some roots that were too crowded.                       

My husband and I spent several hours today prowling around the waterfront shops in Poulsbo.   We also stopped at Valley Nursery hoping to find some Heritage raspberries to purchase so we could fill in where some of our spring planted bare root stock did not thrive.   Unfortunately, they did not have any Heritage plants and I really was not willing to settle for anything else.   I ended up buying a large bag of purple onion sets while I was there - but no raspberries.   When I got home, I planted about 24 of the onion sets next to the fall planted multiplier onions.       

The peppers in the greenhouse have been continuing to do well and the Early Jalapeno plants in particularly were in need of some harvesting.   Late this afternoon I picked quite a few of them and a handful of ripe mini bell peppers.         

Since I have several bags of sliced and frozen peppers and several jars of pickled peppers, I decided to roast these peppers first before freezing them.   The peppers were split and the seeds removed and then placed on a hot grill until the skins began to char and crack.                    

The peppers were then immediately placed in a brown paper bag that was then sealed shut and allowed to sit for about 10 to 15 minutes.   When removed from the bag the peppers were ready for the charred skin to be easily peeled off.               

The mini bells are not a very meaty pepper so the removal of the skins was a little less than easy but the Jalapeno peppers roasted up nicely and the skins came off quite handily.              

 The aroma of roasting peppers is really quite wonderful.   I could not resist them and ended up eating a few as I was doing the grilling.    Scrumptious!   These will be nice to have for future meals.

Thursday night was another evening spent canning produce I purchased while traveling back from Spokane this past weekend.   This time it was the box of pears.   They were quite green when purchased (purposely chose green fruit so that I had more time to get to them) and they had ripened up nicely to the point of being perfect on Thursday.               

We reserved out a few for fresh eating, and the rest were peeled, quartered, and the cores/seeds cut out.   These were then heated in light syrup until hot and then packed into quart jars and processed in my water bath canner.   Pears cut into quarters pack pretty tightly into the jars and so I ended up with 7 very full quarts of pears from the box along with a few fruits reserved for fresh eating.      

I expect that this will be the last canning effort for this season.   I have lots more produce that will be preserved by freezing (the last of the corn & pumpkins (puree)), but I am not planning to can anything else at this point.   I had intended to do some regular dill pickles but the pickling cukes, while still producing, are not generating enough at any time to make processing worth my while.   We have been just using them fresh instead along with the slicing cucumbers.   Everything else in the garden is either intended to be used fresh and/or overwintered in the garden or stored by dry cellaring.        

I have a good supply of frozen, dry storage, and canned items that will supplement the garden's fall and winter harvests.   We prefer fresh produce from our four season harvest garden so I do not need huge amounts of preserved items - but we do need enough to fill in during the low periods of produce availability and to add more variety to the menu.              

The fall and winter crops are in and growing well.  Many are already harvest ready.   The freezer is full and so is the pantry.   The firewood is stacked and dry.   We just have a few chores to attend to for winter prep (stove pipe/chimney sweeping and gutter cleaning).   With the summer preserving efforts largely completed, I can now spend more time in the garden itself - which is something I am looking forward to.     

How is your preserving efforts going for this year?