The Modern Victory Garden

I am back from my travels and the garden survived just fine, although I had some pretty large zucchinis waiting for me when I got home!   Thought it would be a good time to post a mid summer video tour and garden update.              

    

     

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Originally posted (May 30, 2010) with only Parts 1 & 2 due to connection problems to You Tube.  Problem resolved itself and this blog post was updated (May 31, 2010) to include Parts 3, 4, & 5.  

Spring Garden Tour Part 1                                   

Spring Garden Tour Part 2 

 

Spring Garden Tour Part 3                                       

Spring Garden Tour Part 4                           

Spring Garden Tour part 5 (Final)                        

Purchased and brought home our chicks today.   Six Black Sex-Link chicks that within a 95% confidence level should all be females.    Had the brood box already set up with a heat lamp in one corner, soft wood shavings for litter, chick starter feed and feeder, and a chick water container set up on a block of wood to reduce the amount of bedding kicked into the water.   The brood box is set up in our shop, which has heaters running in it.                  

They all seem to be doing well with the transition – eating, drinking, sleeping, and busily scratching away in the shavings.   I took a short video to share them with you.  No narration, just the sound of tiny peeps!   The image is red tinged at times because the heat lamp has a red bulb.                     

                

The sun came out (finally) today and I set all the tomato plants outside to allow them to enjoy direct sunlight.   The entire bunch is getting quite large and it is time to begin a slow hardening off process with all of them.             

Short post today.    I can hardly tear myself away from watching those chicks.    Simply adorable and it is clear that they are all unique individuals.   My daughter is suggesting we name them after the female characters in “Gone with the Wind” (Scarlet, Melanie, etc.  ) and if by chance we do end up with a rooster… he can be Rhett.    What do you think we should name them?

It was really beautiful out today.   No rain, some sunshine, and warm enough that a simple sweatshirt was all that was needed to be comfortable working outside.   Had to do some grocery shopping this morning but once I got home and put everything away, I went straight outside to enjoy the nice weather and get some early season garden tasks taken care of that had been on hold due to too much rain lately.                                

I wrote in my blog entry last night how much the garlic had grown in the past few days.   Since I was out in the garden in the dark last night I could not share pictures, but today I took a few photos of them.   This is the elephant garlic.   

And this is the patch of regular garlic (Inchelium Red).                        

Today, I did some weeding in the asparagus, cranberry, onion/garlic, strawberry, and the rhubarb & bush pie cherry beds.   After these beds were weeded, I side dressed the plantings with some general-purpose organic fertilizer and lightly scratched it into the soil.   I also fertilized the container plantings of blueberries.   While I was weeding I noticed that the rhubarb crowns have new growth emerging.   They don't look like much right now, but it will not be long before we can start enjoying some fresh rhubarb once again.              

I also did the annual strawberry patch "tidy up" today as well.   This involves removing a lot of the spent vegetation that overwintered from last year as well as the vegetation that had actually died back.   I try to generally clear out the area surrounding the crowns of the plants - leaving a good growing point and the young emerging vegetation intact.   After the bed was all cut back and tidied up, I fertilized it with a good all-purpose organic fertilizer.   Here's what one of the beds looked like before I cleaned it up.    

And here it is afterwards.                                                     

It may seem counter intuitive to remove what appears to be green vegetation from these plants, but removing older vegetation and decaying material opens up the plants to better air circulation and makes room for the new growth.   

I also bottom watered all of the seedling trays today too. Took them outside on the lawn to make the job easier.                                         

While I was in the shop, I planted up two 6-packs of Merlot lettuce and put them on the heat mat to germinate.                                        

The primary task I want to get done this weekend, is to turn over the green manure crop of crimson clover in the large 40'X4' bed.   I did half of the bed today and plan to do the other half tomorrow.   It only took a half hour of work to do half the bed, but after a winter of relative inactivity I am playing it safe and breaking the work into two sessions so as not to strain my back.   I made a short video to show how I do this simple annual early spring task.   

                

Here's the bed after I wrapped up this afternoon.                              

The sunshine and fresh air are like a tonic.   Seeing the emerging new growth on the rhubarb, strawberries, garlic, onions, and the bud swell on the bush pie cherries definitely makes me feel quite invigorated.   Hopefully my back will not give me a reality check tomorrow from my exertions today!

My first attempts at creating and posting some videos.   I don't think I will be quitting my day job to become a film director - but I believe it gives a good overview of the garden in winter.