The Modern Victory Garden

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

Whether I am ready or not for it to happen, fall is about to arrive.   Today was a beautiful summer day, temperatures climbed to the low 80’s and the sky was clear and bright.   But I am not so easily fooled, as I know that the progression to fall is already well underway and today’s brief respite from what has been a remarkably cool summer was just a last teasing kiss goodbye from that elusive lady - summer.   The days are rapidly shortening and our regional forecast is calling for an extended period of cool, showery, and overcast conditions – starting tomorrow.   While we certainly will get periods of sunny weather in the weeks to come, it is highly unlikely that temps will climb above low 70’s again until next spring.   At some point the persistent and cold fall rains will arrive and when they do, it will quickly finish off the heat loving crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and beans.   Knowing this, the race is now on to try and salvage as much of the summer harvest items as possible.   

The peppers are well fruited and healthy and I expect the peppers that are formed already will finish ripening without any intervention on my part.   What I cannot expect, is that the current flowers will go on to set fruit at this point in the season.   If it were a warm late summer/early fall season then that would be a possibility, but totally out of the question this year.             

If the heavy rains do not show up for a while, then the dried bean crops (Pinto and Dark Red Kidney) stand a very good chance of ultimately maturing and drying down – as they are a little more tolerant of cooler conditions but not so tolerant of overly wet conditions.   The bean pods are thick and well developed already so the odds look pretty good that they will make it to the finish line successfully.                        

The corn has been struggling all summer and while there are some ears maturing that we will soon enjoy for fresh eating, there is not nearly enough in the patch to provide corn for the freezer.   We have done without in many other years so I do not find this unduly concerning – just a little disappointing. 

The cucumber patch is poised to give a last big flush of cucumbers soon and I should be able to get enough to process a batch of our favorite dill pickle relish.   We have been enjoying lots of refrigerator dills lately too.   Considering how cool this summer has been, the cucumber patch has been performing admirably.   Go cukes!               

So that leaves the tomatoes. We have been getting intermittent small amounts of ripe and semi ripe tomatoes from the Siletz plants for several weeks now.    

They have provided some fresh eating fare but nothing has been coming along in sufficient amounts to even think about doing any preserving.   The likelihood of any of the tomatoes ripening is decreasing dramatically with the big chill moving in so I need to take more aggressive steps to bring in as much as possible while the small window of opportunity is still open.   First step is to start bringing in any fruit that has broken any color or appears to be on the verge of doing so.   In the warmth of the house they will move on to ripening.   Tonight I picked all the Siletz tomatoes that met those criteria.                    

I will keep doing this over the coming days to try and pull in everything possible so it can potentially ripen.                

The other action I need to take is to start buttoning up the greenhouse at night and reopen it during the day.   I have five Celebrity tomatoes in the greenhouse that are healthy and bearing good-sized fruit.   They need warmer temps at night to finish ripening so closing up the greenhouse will help hold in the heat at night and push that envelope a little further.   I cannot leave it closed during the day though because ventilation is a huge problem particularly when the greenhouse is full of lush vegetation and condensation that builds up from the cool night time conditions.   So my morning and evening routine will have to be modified to add this extra little step for a while.                    

I am confident I will squeeze out some reasonable tomato harvests yet, but it will take some effort on my part.   This cool summer has certainly put a dent on this year’s garden season, but there are some positives that came from it too.   The peas (shell and sugar snap) , lettuce, broccoli, spinach, and potatoes flourished.   I have not dug into the parsnip patch yet, but I think it will prove to be a good one this year too.   And the crops I have recently planted are rushing along nicely to maturity.   Just look at this broccoli and swiss chard plants I transplanted approximately four weeks ago on July 18th.         

Those are happy plants.   So not everything in the garden is sad to bid goodbye to summer.   I would have preferred to have her be with us longer and with more intensity this year, but I am content to work the hand that was dealt me this year as hard as possible and just keep moving forward.    Farewell summer.   I look forward to your return again next year.                   

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday I planted out 36 broccoli (Premium Crop) and 12 swiss chard (Bright Lights) starts.   They went into the garden section where the pea patch had previously been.   I covered the bed with some netting because we have had a rabbit visiting the edge of the garden lately and while I am not too concerned about some of the plants being nibbled on, I am concerned about baby plants getting eaten down to the nub which kills them outright.                       

This is one of several important fall crop plantings that will occur over the next several weeks.   I still have kale and chinese cabbages to transplant out as well, but I ran out of time (and open bed area) this past weekend.   I am hoping to get them attended to on Friday.   My big challenge is going to be to find another open bed area big enough (and soon enough) to plant the fall crop of spinach.   Everything is largely in use at the moment and yet, I will need to plant the spinach patch within the next two weeks if I want to have spinach in September.                                  

While I am definitely thinking about the fall crops, I am also focused on the summer garden that is really coming into it’s own at this point.   The cucumbers have tiny female flowers/fruits formed.                            

Unfortunately, the bees seem to have all largely disappeared over the past several weeks.   Those cucumbers are going to need them and my pumpkins are not getting pollinated.   I am probably going to have to resort to hand pollination soon if they don’t return.                 

I have been keeping a careful eye on the first Siletz tomato to ripen.   It is a little shop worn because this green fruit has been formed for quite a while and had to wait patiently for the weather to warm up - but it is finally getting ripe and I think it may be ready by either Thursday evening or Friday.      

The Siletz plants have lots more tomatoes formed and growing so this one should soon be followed by a more steady supply.   The bush beans and kidney beans are flowering and I think we should have green beans fairly soon.   In the meantime, we are getting a bounty of sugar snap peas and zucchini.   The spring crop of broccoli is winding down but I am still getting a good harvest of side shoots, and I have been harvesting the large leaves for my flock of chickens.   Tonight’s dinner was a stir fry with Pad Thai sauce using the current bounty from the garden and some strips of lean beef and chinese noodles.                                             

For the last two years the Gold Rush zucchini has far outperformed the green zucchini variety.   This year, I switched green zucchini varieties and planted “Partenon” which has been very prolific and for some reason the Gold Rush plants have been rather unproductive.   I suspicion it is in part due to the lack of working bees in the garden currently.   I hope this is just a temporary dip in my bee population due to weather or some other circumstance and that they will return soon.       

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener