The Modern Victory Garden

I noted in my last blog post that it appeared I had some creature getting into one of the carrot patches – chewing off the tops of the carrots and pulling up several and gnawing them up quite well.  The little rascal was not even bothering to finish off the carrots that were pulled before moving on to pull up yet another!                             

Last night, I popped out the back door to let our elderly dog outside for a while and noticed that something was in the carrot patch.   The back porch light had been on so the adjacent garden beds (which is where the carrots are) were well illuminated, and luckily our old dog is so deaf and blind that she just ambled off and did not bother the creature - giving me an opportunity to quietly move up closer and get a good look without frightening him off.   I did not have my camera with me so I do not have photos to share, however, I think some Beatrix Potter illustrations will do nicely instead.

Yes, Peter Rabbit has braved the modern day equivalent of Mr. McGregor’s garden for a tempting meal of sweet, crunchy, garden fresh, carrots.   He was quite brazen and rather fearless as he continued to eat while I stood close by and admired his size and handsome pelt.   I must inform you that this is a well-fed rabbit and my carrot patch probably had a great deal to do with that!    

I have decided he may have the rest of the carrots in that particular section of garden as he largely topped them all already.   However, I am going to put some netting up over the remaining bed of parsnips and carrots as soon as I am home during daylight hours .  He has not found his way to the other main bed of root crops (yet) so I need to get some mechanical barriers in place to protect them from potential damage.   Netting is a good way to do this and does not hurt the animal in any manner - just blocks his access to the goodies.  There is only so far I can go with my generosity of sharing the garden abundance – after all, my family needs to eat too!                    

If you have not enjoyed "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" for a while, I would encourage you to read it online HERE.   As a vegetable gardener the beautiful story and illustrations are particularly appealing and timeless.

It has been a bit of an interesting weekend.   Yesterday was filled with errands and appointments; however, I managed to get out to the garden early in the morning and transplanted the Walla Walla sweet onion seedlings that I had started back in mid-August.   They are hard to see in this picture because they are basically just little green threads at the moment.                 

Right next to them, I planted the multiplier onion bulbs.   Also took a few moments to cut the Cascadia sugar snap peas away from their roots but left the vines hanging on the support.   I want the vines to finish withering down and the pea pods to dry.   Both the peas and beans seem to be lingering in productive mode and are not moving to dry seed mode very rapidly.   The runner beans are even flowering and producing new beans.    I want to save seed from this variety so I would prefer to see it starting to dry down rather than so lush and green.     

Those are cucumbers next to the beans and they are still going strong too.   There is a sure sign though that fall has arrived - in that there is an abundance of spiders everywhere in the garden.    While I was looking at the runner beans yesterday morning, I noticed this beautiful spider and web that spanned a large section of the vertical grow support.                  

Today after breakfast, I drove to the Seabeck area to see Lori Christie's garden.   We had an enjoyable stroll through her garden and visited the rabbits and chickens too.   I then headed home to take care of some garden chores before the weather turns significantly cooler and wetter this week.   First up was to plant the garlic.   Usually I wait until the first week of October to do this but I am going to be traveling to Washington DC next weekend so I moved it up more than a week to ensure it was taken care of.                   

Next I tackled the task of weed whacking the garden walkways.   The grass and weeds in many areas were getting very tall and were harboring slugs.   It is important to keep these areas cleared going into winter to reduce the  available area for garden pests to over winter in.   Unfortunately, I was not 15 minutes into this task when I hit a bees nest under one of the bed edgings.   The resident bees were NOT happy with me and immediately swarmed.   Luckily it was not a large nest but I had one sting me on the hand as I switched off the weed whacker and started running for the house.   Several more were on my clothes and buzzing about me.   I shook some off as I dashed inside but a few managed to come into the house with me.   One went up my pant leg and stung me through my sock on the ankle.   I quickly stripped down and trapped a few more in my shirt and jeans.           

I always have a pretty severe swelling reaction to bee stings so I promptly took a Benadryl pill and rubbed Benadryl cream on the two direct sting areas.   The swelling was still pretty significant but I think it would have been a whole lot worse if I had not gotten the antihistamine into my system so quickly.   Waited a half hour to make sure the bees had calmed down and then went back out and finished up the job before my hand swelled to gargantuan proportions.   I was able to locate the nest as I could see the bees coming and going from it.   I don't begrudge them their home and the attack was purely one of defense on their part.   I will just have to be careful in this area until they go quiet for the winter.    

The garden is tidied up and largely transitioned into fall and winter crops.   I still have peppers, cucumbers, and green beans producing but they are on their last legs and should be wrapping up soon with the forecasted  cooler and wetter weather that is expected to arrive Monday afternoon.   The following  picture shows the emerging green manure cover crop of crimson clover that I planted after I harvested the potatoes on Labor Day weekend (left most bed in the picture).    Most of the winter crops are in the center bed -  including carrots, parsnips, cabbages, late broccoli, and brussel sprouts.

I hope you had a good weekend in the garden - but hopefully without bee incidents!

This has been a crazy busy week and tomorrow morning my sister and I are going to drive to Spokane together for a quick visit to our parents.   Hopefully we will be seeing our other two sisters while there as well.   I may (or may not) have mentioned before that my father has Alzheimer's disease and is in a specialized care facility in Spokane.   Recently he has begun progressing more rapidly through the latter stages of the disease and I want to get over to see him (and my mom) again before the weather starts making travel through the mountain passes more difficult.                         

This evening I harvested several items for the purposes of leaving my husband some tasty nibbles to enjoy while I am away, as well as to take along with me so I can prepare a nice dinner for my mom and sister on Friday evening.

All of the cucumbers will be combined with some onion and tomatoes (ripened off the vine) and then dressed with garlic infused vinaigrette to make a fresh cucumber and tomato salad for my husband to enjoy.   I will also leave a few of the carrots for him to snack on.  My daughter is currently away on a travel adventure of her own - so it is just my husband holding down the fort while I am gone.       

The rest of the carrots, zucchini, mini bell peppers, pole beans and runner beans that I harvested tonight - will all go with us to Spokane along with a few more of the ripe tomatoes from the box in the garage.   Should be the foundation of a nice meal for us on Friday.             

As a result of my traveling this weekend, nothing will be done in the garden of any consequence.   Luckily, the garden is actually not needing much attention right now.    The only thing I wished I had gotten done last weekend (but did not for lack of time) was to spray the broccoli with Bt - as the heads are really getting good sized and I would prefer to harvest them without the worry of finding cabbageworms.    Oh well, it will just have to wait until I get back.   The rest of the garden will be fine for a few days without my presence.                                    

I will check back in on Sunday after I have returned.   In the meantime, I hope you all have a pleasant weekend and can find time to spend in your own food production gardens.

Drove over six hours today to get home and am a little weary and stiff as a result. After unpacking and checking in with my family, I did a quick walk through of the garden to see how things had fared in my absence. While many things have continued to grow and develop over the past several days, the most obviously changed were the zucchini and winter squash plants. They have really put on a lot of new growth in a very short time period.            

The recently direct seeded runner beans, cucumbers, and radishes have all emerged and are looking healthy. I did see some white moths fluttering around the broccoli plants, which tells me I need to apply some Bt spray tomorrow. The broccoli is just now really starting to come on and I do not want to lose the harvest to cabbageworms. While I was out in the garden I cut some side shoots and a couple of smaller main heads of the broccoli to use for the evening meal prep.                                                

The fall Territorial Seed catalog arrived while I was gone. At a minimum, I need to order some more carrot seed for the mid-summer planting as I am completely out.  In addition, they are offering a new loose-leaf cabbage variety called Beira Tronchuda that I am seriously considering trying for the fall/winter garden. Before I get ready to order anything though, I need to check my seed inventory to determine if I need some crimson clover for the fall cover cropping as well.                       

I have two more days off from work and plan to spend part of that time out in the garden. Will post a lengthier garden update shortly.

It's that time of year again; the slugs are out in force and hungry for the tender young plants that are emerging in the garden beds. Living as we do in the maritime Pacific Northwest and in a house that is in a small clearing surrounded by dense forest - means that slugs are my number one garden pests. Through years of experience I have found several tried and true methods for slug management - and proven several other often-recommended solutions as essentially worthless. I thought it might be worth while to share with you some of what I have learned on this subject.          

First off, let me just say that without a doubt the most effective method of slug management is to do an early morning garden inspection and just pluck them off and either drop them into a small bucket of soapy water OR fling them far into the dark woods.   If this is done about twice a week spring through fall - the populations are kept more manageable.  It does require getting up quite early a couple of days each week. In addition, it requires that you invest enough time to give a careful inspection of your plants - making sure you find the ones hidden inside the folds of leaves etc.    

The second most effective method is the use of copper collars. I have found they work really well overall but unfortunately they are not a complete solution. First, they are only practical to use on larger items like cucumbers, broccoli, etc.  Second, if a leaf is drooping down over the edge of the copper collar to the ground, slugs will use the leaf as a bridge and climb aboard the plant. Despite these limitations, I have had stellar success with copper collars and have accumulated quite a few of them.   What is particularly nice about this slug management tool is that they are permanent and completely reusable. They only require a clean up with either some metal polish or some steel wool to remove the build up of tarnish that a season of use puts on them. Here's a picture of my 2009 broccoli planting with the collars in place

.                                                                                               

Of course, those are not possible to use on smaller items or large block plantings like my pea patch or bean patch - so here are some other methods I employ along with the hand picking:

• Copper tape wrapped around the perimeter of an entire raised boxed bed - sold with adhesive backing on them this works well but the tape is so thin that this only lasts for a few years before peeling away. I have this on one of my long vertical grow beds and it has made a HUGE difference. That bed has very little slug activity in it.   
• Diamateceous Earth ("DE") sprinkled around the outer perimeter of a growing bed area. If you remove the slugs carefully prior to putting the outer band down of DE - you don't have to dust the plants themselves. I use this stuff with great caution because if you accidentally inhale some of the dust you can really damage your lungs. Works fairly well if you don't get lots of rain for a spell and if you apply it with great care.
• I no longer use any natural mulch around plants. A thin layer of compost is okay, but I have found it is best just to wait until fall to lay down a heavy carpet of compost on the beds or just work it into planting holes when transplanting. But the reality of gardening in the rainy Pacific Northwest is that you are much better off to never layer on mulch around plants because it is a home for slugs. Deep mulching (ala lasagna gardening) is a disaster if you live in slug territory.
• Keep walkways mowed down and weeds whacked near beds - they are a home for slugs.
• Place a wood plank or board in the bed where it will not interfere with your plantings. In the afternoon, turn it over and remove all the slugs that have retreated to the cool damp underside for the day. Dispatch them in the same manner as you do for the hand picking "walk about".
• I keep an old pair of salad tongs near the garden area because they are the perfect tool for grabbing and flinging slugs with! Don't worry the salad tongs stay in the garden and are not the ones we use for meal serving!  It really does work though because the longer handles give greater throwing distance when flinging them AND I don't have to touch the larger slimy ones with my bare hands. Sadly, this does not work with the baby-sized slugs and there is nothing for it but to grab them with your fingers. Ewww... not fun but necessary.

These are all methods I regularly employ and I have found them to be effective in varying degrees.  However, what I have found to be a complete waste of time was the often-recommended beer trap solution.   My experience was that it was a lot of fussing around - cleaning them out to remove the rotten slug bodies bloated in moldering old beer and buying cheap beer or mixing yeast and sugar solutions to refill the containers sunk partially into the soil - all just to capture a scant few of the varmints. I would not recommend it at all.                     

That's my experience in the land of the slug - maritime Pacific Northwest.

The garden walkways in my garden are for the most part old sod from a lawn that used to exist in that area.  About every 4 weeks or so during the growing season, I take the weed whacker through the garden walkways and knock down the growth of grass and weeds. The cut is extremely close to the ground, in fact I purposefully attempt to basically scalp the walkway soil to discourage and/or rapidly slow down the regrowth of vegetation. It's not just a matter of aesthetics that I do this.  It certainly does make the garden look nicer to keep it trim and neat, but it is also an important pest management strategy to keep the vegetation knocked down.  In particular, slugs love to shelter in the tall grass next to the bed edging during the day - only to come out in the evening and eat all the plants in the garden beds.  Keeping their hideaways minimal helps keep their population in check.  Today's primary garden task was to do the first walkway weed whacking of the year. The growth was pretty lush as you can see from this picture.

And here it is after I had been through the garden with the weed whacker.

Big difference in how the garden looks from just this one simple chore. It takes about a two hour commitment of time to do this from beginning to end because I have to make sure everything in the garden is prepared ahead of time (raising netting, removing debris, etc) and I take frequent breaks to spare my back and arm from repetitive stress problems.

I had hoped to get to the cleaning of the greenhouse panels today too, but decided to do that another day. Wanted to relax and enjoy the glorious sunshine filled day instead!

Thought I would give you a pictorial update on how things are "growing" in the garden. Here's an overview picture of the garden, looking at it from the vantage point of our deck that wraps around 2/3rds of our house.

The tomato bed is thriving despite the distinctly cold weather we had mid to late last week. The grow tunnel and red plastic is catching and holding a tremendous amount of heat. I have to open up the ends on sunny/warm days to keep some cross ventilation going, but during the cool overcast days I just leave it buttoned up. Here's a look down the tunnel from one end.

The first two plants are "Stupice" (pronounced "stew peach ka") which are the earliest producers of the several varieties I am growing this year. If you look carefully at the picture you will notice that both of these plants have blossoms on them. With extra care and attention, it is possible that they will produce the first ripe fruit by mid June.

The onions and garlic bed is doing very well with the exception of the shallots that seem to have gaps in the bed where the plants did not make it through the winter. This happened last year with the shallots as well. I doubt I will continue to keep growing them because I cannot afford to underutilize growing beds like this and as much as I like to use them in cooking - a good onion will do just as nicely and produce better for me to boot. So I will probably just use this crop up and not reserve any bulbs for planting out this fall. Here's a picture of the main allium bed (sweet onions, elephant garlic, multiplier onions, regular garlic, and shallots) and a picture of the storage onions ("Copra") planted in another section of the garden.

The broccoli, cabbages, and kohlrabi are all progressing nicely too. The first crop of broccoli was planted out with the cabbages, and kohlrabi quite a while ago. Here's a picture of that bed as it looks today.

And here is the second round of broccoli that was started 4 weeks later than the first crop and which was just recently planted out.

Amazingly enough the second crop of broccoli are so much more advanced in growth in comparison to the earlier crop (which had to contend with cold and snow right after I transplanted them) that they are both approximately at the same size and stage of growth - despite the month difference in age!  I am going to have a big broccoli crop all at once because my usual succession planting strategy just did not work out for me this year. Oh well, I will just put some in the freezer for later use.

Another crop I will update you on is the spinach. We are harvesting from the overwintered patch of spinach and it has been keeping us well fed for the past many weeks. I am working it hard with regular harvests and it will soon be depleted and inclined to bolt to seed as the days lengthen. Here's a picture of the patch as it looks today.

And here is the spring seeded spinach patch that will be soon ready to replace the overwintered patch.

These plants are just beginning to show their first true leaves.  This patch will produce our big spring harvest that is largely blanched and then frozen for use during the winter months. This is usually the first preserving effort that I do each year - freezing spinach from the spring crop.

Finally, here is the vertical grow bed that has some lettuces, the celery, swiss chard, and the beets planted up in it. The beets are all up but quite small yet (hard to see). The celery and swiss chard are thriving. I have direct seeded the sugar snap peas in this bed as well, but they are not emerged yet.

So that's it for now. Overall, things are in good shape. I need to finish up the two remaining big beds in the garden expansion area because I will soon be needing them for the last transplants that are currently growing in the shop under lights, and to direct seed the green bean and parsnip patches.

I will leave you with a picture of our Japanese red maple trees that are starting to really leaf out now. Spring is here (finally!).

As many of you are aware, on Sunday I spent several hours working on the annual spring potato planting process.   This is a pretty significant undertaking because I plant a large amount (feeds us for a year) and because I trench the beds to grow the most potatoes possible in my raised boxed beds.  The final step requires setting up the PVC hoops over all of the potato beds and covering them with bird netting.   This is necessary because I use bone meal in the trenches as an organic fertilizer and unfortunately my old dog (who shares the back yard with the garden) likes to dig up all the beds looking for the source of that delicious "bone" smell.   She has done it before, so now I just routinely protect the beds as part of the annual planting process.  

(sigh)

Apparently one portion of the netting was not secured tightly enough and our dog must have searched every stretch of the covering to find this one point of potential entry -  but search she did - and find it she did.   She gets points for persistence but they hardly are enough to make up for the demerits she won for herself today.   

The damage consists of her walking down the center of the bed knocking over the piles of trenched dirt, digging up several potatoes in about three trenches and then tearing some of the netting to get out when she "forgot" how she got in, in the first place!   There is no permanent damage done - and it all can be repaired with a little time and attention, but I am certainly not too happy with the family pooch at the moment.   I did my best to secure the section she managed to get through and hopefully she will give it a rest for another year.   I plan to wait until Saturday to tackle the fix up work as nothing is in any immediate jeopardy and I would prefer to do the repairs during the light of  day.       

Ah well, the spring planting season was going entirely too smoothly this year.   I was due for a hiccup in the plan and if this is all that occurs then I guess I am getting off easy.