The Modern Victory Garden

Whenever I travel to Spokane to visit my mom and family members there, I like to break up my long drive home by stopping at the fruit barns in Thorp Washington.   They carry fruits and vegetables that are in season from the nearby Yakima and Wenatchee growing areas and I always pick up a box (or several!) of fruit.   There are actually three of them located in the same spot and if I cannot find what I am looking for at one (or for a reasonable price) the others are likely to have it.   I stopped there a week and a half ago on my way back from a visit in Spokane and brought home two boxes of Jonagold apples.                              

I set them in my kitchen and ignored them until this past Monday.   I had the day off from work on Monday and it was a rainy and blustery day – perfect weather to stay indoors and do some canning.   I must confess that while I love the results of canning, I am less than keen on the “doing” part of it.   The prep work is time consuming and very messy, the kitchen is always a disaster no matter how much I work to “mop up’ after myself as I go, and it always takes twice as long for about half of the output that I imagine should be happening!   As a result, I generally do more freezing to preserve things than canning.   However, some things are just better canned – tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, dill pickle relish, dill pickles, jams/jellies, and most fruits.   So far this year I have canned quarts of diced tomatoes, pints of tomato sauce, and pints of dill pickle relish.   In addition, I have some pints of dilly beans, pints of various jams, and pints of seasoned tomato sauce still in the pantry from last year’s canning efforts to be used up.  The jams will last us a long while as we go through them slowly so I did not bother making any blackberry jam even though it really was a good blackberry harvest this year.   I will use the seasoned tomato sauce first before using my current year pints of tomato sauce.   All in all, the pantry of canned goods should be sufficient for the two of us given the large amount of items I have put by in the freezer and the fall/winter crops I have growing in the garden that will provide fresh fare.      

However, unlike vegetables, we are not even close to being self sufficient on fruit and we have to buy fruit to supplement our modest garden production.   In general, we like to eat fresh fruit so I do not try to can or freeze a great deal and just purchase what is in season as we need it.  However, I do like to have some fruit options in the pantry for convenience.    The task on Monday was to convert those two boxes of beautiful apples into some quarts of applesauce to restock the pantry with some convenient winter fruit options.   Applesauce, sliced canned pears, and frozen berries are particularly good to pack as part of my workday lunches.   I still have three full freezer bags of blueberries and raspberries in the freezer to finish using (prior season harvest) and with the quarts of applesauce this fall should really be more than enough for the coming year without having to add canned pears to the mix as well.   I am still trying to adjust the amounts I put by each year to our new smaller family size.   Our daughter moved to Pennsylvania in late July 2010 to attend university there and I have been seriously scaling down the amount of food I preserve as a result.   For the most part I have figured out how much less we need, but occasionally I still way over do it.                      

Monday was a day of washing, quartering, and then cooking apples until softened and then running them through my Roma Strainer to extract beautiful sauce.   The strainer does an excellent job of removing the peels, seeds and stems etc. These waste products went into the worm box. The sauce was then flavored with some sugar and good quality cinnamon and brought to a boiling temperature before filling the quart jars and processing them in the canner.   I ended up with 15 quarts of applesauce for my efforts.            

I think that wraps up the canning efforts for me this year.   I am also done with the other preserving efforts other than curing the pumpkins sufficiently so they store well.   The focus now is on keeping the fall and winter crops growing and producing to supplement and extend the frozen, canned, and stored items.   

I am linking this post in to Robin's Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard.  Check it out and join in!

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

My digital camera died last weekend.  I have a new one purchased but it will not be here until early next week.   My husband graciously came to my rescue by letting me borrow his camera for a few days.   It is a lot more complicated but I am managing to get reasonable pictures out of it.             

Last Sunday I planted out quite a few more transplants of cold hardy items – kale, cabbages, swiss chard, strawberries, and celery.   I also planted out my one and only Tree Kale/Collards plant.                       

Behind the tree kale start is a whole bed of celery plants.          

On Monday, the two “Lil Big” apple trees I ordered this winter arrived.   There is one each of Nova Spy and Honeycrisp.     I did not waste any time getting them into the ground because bare root nursery stock can really dry out in transit and it is best to give their roots a soak and then get them into the ground as fast as is possible.   These are going into the area where I used to have the asparagus bed.   The asparagus patch failed to thrive in that spot so I pulled them out last year with the intention of putting some more fruit plantings in eventually.   These small trees mature into production fairly quickly and do not take up a significant footprint of land.  They do need some supports as they get top heavy when more mature.   I intend to install the supports for them this coming weekend, but the push on Monday was to just get them planted up into their new home.                

Bare root tree stock always look like “sticks and twigs” when first planted up - leafless with not too much promise of life in them.   However, these were good sturdy young trees and I expect they will be coming out of dormancy quickly.   This year I will be growing some greens in the rest of the unused area of the bed, but next year I will probably plant some strawberries underneath the young mini apple trees.              

The napa cabbages I planted out several weeks ago are growing along nicely. We have had some rather cold nights (and rainy days) of late but they are doing fine despite that.                

I have taken the day off from work on Friday so that I can take advantage of the better weather expected that day (and on into Saturday) to get the potato patch planted up.   It is forecasted to go back to rainy and cold by Sunday morning, so I want to seize the opportunity to get this done while I can.                        

If you recall, I potted up my pepper plants about a week and a half ago. They did not skip a beat and have continued to really grow and fill out.   

This variety is Lady Bell.   The plants are incredibly stocky and sturdy and very leafy!   I have not grown this variety before but so far I am quite impressed.                

Looking forward to some sunshine and being out in the garden to enjoy it on Friday.                  

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Blog updates were non-existent last week because a combination of work commitments, traveling, and using every spare moment that I had at home to do some canning - kept me away.   There just was not any time left after all of that to actually get out in the garden for much more than ten seconds, or to do a blog post.   My life is like that sometimes.   At this point though, I think the current fever pitch of commitments and canning efforts has come to a conclusion and I am anxious to spend some time in the garden.             

Friday, Saturday and Sunday was tied up in a road trip to Spokane to see my mom.   One of my sisters traveled with me and another sister joined us on Saturday for a further drive up to Clark Fork Idaho to check on my mom’s property holdings there.   It is about an eight-hour drive to Spokane from my homestead and it is a five-hour round trip drive to go from Spokane to Clark Fork and back.   Drove 8 hours on Friday to get to Spokane; drove 5 hours on Saturday to go to Clark Fork; and then turned around and drove another 8 hours on Sunday to go home again.   I really don’t like spending that much time in my car but luckily I had some good company with me on each leg, which made the journey pleasant.   I drive a fuel efficient Honda Fit which is a great little commuter car, but it is not exactly a luxury sedan and by Sunday night my back was telling me to get out of the car and stay out!                  

When I travel to my mom’s place in Spokane, I like to break up the return drive home by stopping in Thorp Washington at the large produce barn just off of I-90.   There is actually two produce outlets located there and if you cannot find what you are interested in at one place (or a good price), you can often find it at the other location.   Both places carry central Washington (Wenatchee and Yakima mostly) produce.   On Sunday I made a stop there intent on getting some pears, apples, and tomatoes for canning.   The peaches are also in season right now but I have decided not to can peaches this year, as we did not go through last year’s supply with much enthusiasm for some reason.   Unlike the peaches though, pears continue to be one of our favorite canned fruit items and I was happy to find several varieties to choose from at really good prices.   I brought home a box of Bartlett pears and a box of Gala apples from the big produce barn.   The tomatoes I found at the second outlet location and the price was less than $0.64/lb with tax for beautiful Yakima tomatoes.  I bought two boxes (50 pounds).   Loaded up with my fruit treasures, I finished the trip home and after unpacking and checking in on everything, decided to tackle one of the boxes of tomatoes that very evening.   I really could not afford to put the processing off as I was going to have to work fast to can both the tomatoes and the pears over the coming few days to catch them at their peak.   The apples would hold in the box longer, but the highly perishable tomatoes and pears demanded more immediate attention.   On Sunday evening, I canned 10 quarts of diced tomatoes.   

On Monday night I had a late evening work commitment.   Tuesday night I dashed home from work and tackled the remaining box of tomatoes.   I added some of my own ripe garden tomatoes to the stash (been ripening off the vine) and from all of those,I processed 10 pint jars of tomato sauce, 4 pint jars of chili sauce, and 5 pint jars of salsa.                            

I repeated the process on Wednesday evening, dashing home and tackling the pears.   I held out about 1/3 of the box for fresh eating purposes, and processed the remaining 2/3rds of the perfectly ripe pears into 7 quarts of pear quarters in light syrup.    

There is still the box of apples remaining but they will hold until this weekend when I have a bit more time to address them.   The apples are destined to be made into applesauce.            

I did some harvesting Sunday night when I got home and again on Tuesday night after work.   The two harvests are almost carbon copies of each other as the current steady producers in the garden are the zucchinis (still!) and the cucumbers.   In addition, I am pulling tomatoes out of the boxes where they have been ripening off the vine and I am getting a steady and ample supply of them at the moment.   

The Sunday harvest of cucumbers and tomatoes were made into a lovely salad of peeled and sliced cucumber, quartered chunks of tomatoes, sliced kalamata olives, sliced red onions – all dressed/marinated in a garlic infused vinegarette.   The Tuesday harvest of cucumbers were cut into spears and used to restock the refrigerator dill pickle solution.   I also added some more dill heads to the jar to brighten up the “dill” flavoring.   The zucchini and remaining tomatoes are sitting on the counter and really need to be used over the next few days.                          

As you can tell, I have only had very brief bits of time in the actual garden itself over the past week.   I intend to remedy that this coming weekend.   The tomato patch is totally dead and the plant debris needs to be removed.   I have several beds that have been waiting patiently for me to layer them with compost and/or seed them with a green manure crop of crimson clover.   And within the next several weeks, it will even be time to plant the garlic bulbs.   Usually I do that around the first week or so of October but the temperatures are actually fairly warm at the moment so I am going to wait a while until the night temps start dipping lower.                        

I think that about recaps what I have been up to for the past week.  It can  best be summarized by saying that I largely spent the week driving and canning.   It is my intention to have a garden update post this coming weekend.   Good to be home - even better to be out of that car!                   

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

The Modern Victory Garden site and blog was quiet all of last week because I was in Washington DC on business.   Upon returning, I found a backlog of urgent items to attend to - both at home and at work.   Consequently I have barely been out to the garden in about a week's time and am desperately looking forward to the coming weekend.   The good news is that it will be a long one for me as I have Monday off from work (Columbus Day) and I do not have any appointments or commitments to keep so the weekend is mine.   I intend to make good use of the time and not only get some garden and home time in, but to also get out and enjoy the fall colors.   Our local trees have turned color virtually overnight this year.                             

One of the tasks I want to get to this weekend is to pick the sugar snap peas (Cascadia) and harvest the saved seed.    A while ago, I cut the plants from their roots but left the vines on the support structure to encourage them to finish the drying down process.   It has been almost two weeks since I did that and the pods and vines appear ready to be removed.                     

I will shell the seed peas and let them dry out of the pod for another week or more before packaging them up for storage.    I have runner beans and bush beans that I am also hoping to save seed from.   Unfortunately, the plants do not seem to want to dry down and the rainy season is fast approaching.   I will assess the progress of these plants this weekend and if they are far enough along, I will do a similar root pruning process to encourage the final dry down process.                   

You may recall that early last spring (mid March) that I added several new fruit and berry plantings to my garden to expand the fruit production.     These additions were only possible because I expanded the total size of the garden, which provided room to add more perennial plantings.   Specifically, I added more rhubarb (2 plants - Valentine), a whole new bed of strawberries (32 plants - Ozark Beauty), a raspberry patch (10 bare root plants - Heritage), bush pie cherries (10 bare root plants - Hansen), and a bed of cranberries (8 plants - Stevens).   Most all of these plantings are doing really well.   The only losses I incurred were that 4 of the 10 raspberry plants never broke dormancy and I will need to replace them.   I may check my local nursery this weekend to see if they carry plants of this variety so I can do a fall planting.   If not, I will order some next spring and do the replacement process.   The raspberries that did make it are producing their first light crop right now.   Not a one is making it into the house to be weighed though - as we just eat them right in the patch.   The bush pie cherries have gotten a good start and are turning into healthy bushes.           

They should produce their first harvest next year.   The cranberries and rhubarb plants have also gotten a really good start and should be providing their first harvest next year as well.   The new strawberry bed is robust and has already provided me with fruit in their first year.                            

All in all, the additions are poised to add quite a bit of fruit production for me in 2010.                                                     

Things I am hoping to get done this weekend include:

• Harvest sugar snap pea seed, shell, and begin drying
• Possibly root prune the bush bean and runner beans - seed saving
• Mix the compost piles
• Water the container plantings
• Fertilize and lime the lawn
• Clean the wood stove chimney/stove pipe
• Clean the gutters out

Are you planning to work in the garden this weekend?

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?

Last Sunday on the way home from my trip to Spokane, I stopped at the big produce barn in Thorp Washington and purchased a box each of peaches and pears.   The pears were quite green and need a few days to ripen.   The peaches were just perfect though, and needed to be preserved within a very short time frame.   Monday was just far too hectic at work to even consider getting away on time to tackle the peaches, so Tuesday evening (today) was the designated day for it.                        

Doing preserving efforts in the evening after a long day at the office requires really good organization skills and a little planning.   The first order of business is to ensure that the evening meal was prepared ahead of time to keep the schedule clear for the canning/freezing work.    I started some barbeque pork chops with diced potatoes in the crock-pot and prepped a large bowl of coleslaw that went into the fridge - before I left for work today.   The second thing that was necessary was to actually leave work on time.   That is harder than it sounds but I managed to accomplish it. 

After a fast meal of the sweet and spicy barbeque pork chops, potatoes, and coleslaw, the box of peaches was attended to.   First I processed some canned peach halves in light syrup.   Then I made a batch of peach jam.   Finally, I sliced up peaches, coated them with sugar, and packaged them in 5-cup amounts in gallon zip lock freezer bags.   I ended up with 7 quarts of the peach halves, 3 pints and 2 half pints of peach jam, and 2 gallon freezer bags with sweetened peach slices.   

The picture does not show the freezer bags of peach slices, as I rushed them into the freezer as soon as I could after packaging them up.   The 5-cup amounts per freezer bag are just the right amount for peach pie or for  peach cobbler.     

If all goes well, I plan to do a similar effort on Thursday to get the pears processed.   For now, I am glad to get the box of peaches done and I think the end results are "Just Peachy"!

Last night after work, I zipped over to HeidiH's place in nearby Silverdale and took her up on an offer of some Shiro plums from her overabundant tree.   I was rushing to pick them up and get home because I had tomatoes waiting for me that I wanted to can that evening.   With Heidi's help, I was able to pick quite a lot of them and get on my way quite quickly.   It made for a short visit with Heidi but I did get the opportunity to do a tour of her planting beds and admire her corn patch.   Take a look at this nice bounty!    

Big thank you to HeidiH for her generosity!   I intend to use some of these tomorrow to make some plum jam.   Have not quite made up my mind what else I want to do with them beyond that.                                 

After I got home from the plum picking, I immediately set to work canning the tomatoes that had been accumulating for the past several days.   The return of  some warmer weather really accelerated the tomato ripening process.   The Stupice, Legend, Siletz, and the one and only Celebrity plant are now producing abundantly.   I also harvested the first ripe Viva Italia (sauce) tomatoes over the past few days as well.   With last night's picking added to the growing pile, I ended up with about 19 pounds to work with.   Thinking this was probably just enough for a full canner of quart jars,  I decided to do these on a week night and get them attended to while still in good shape.   The good news is - that there was not only enough for 7 quart jars, but also enough to do a small batch of salsa (4 pint jars).   The bad news is - that I did not plan on doing two canner loads of processing on a work night and with a late start at that!   It was extremely late by the time I wrapped up and laid my weary head on the pillow.   However, cooling on the kitchen counter while I slept (briefly!) were the rewards for my effort.             

Tonight I purposefully made the evening more leisurely and have chosen to ignore the plums until Saturday morning.   My evening harvest consisted of some Red Cloud potatoes ... 

... some carrots and a couple of pickling cukes that needed to come off the vine before they got too large, and another couple of pounds of ripe tomatoes which I failed to take a picture of.                              

The good news is - that the Stupice, Legend, Siletz, and Celebrity tomatoes are producing well for me.   The really bad news is - that my Viva Italia tomatoes have a clear case of blight and are going down fast.   I picked from these plants just two days ago and again last night and noticed some developing problems at that time.   But tonight it is clear that the disease is advancing rapidly and the plants are deteriorating at an alarming pace. 

(sigh)                                                                       

I should be able to salvage the fruit that has already broken color and is not sporting the watery lesions yet - but it will be a pitifully small amount.   The recent abrupt change in our weather from freakishly warm and dry, to cool and wet (practically overnight) probably has a lot to do with this.   Unfortunately, blight is an ever-present problem in the rainy coastal Pacific Northwest.   While the remaining tomatoes are producing well for me, without the sauce tomatoes there will never be enough to put up a sufficient supply of preserved tomato products.   I think my family will stage a rebellion if we go two years in a row with minimal tomatoes preserved - so I  am going to have to break down and go to the local farmers market to purchase some tomatoes to supplement mine for preserving purposes.  

I have just not had any luck with sauce tomatoes since moving to this side of the Cascades.   They tend to be mid to late maturing varieties and only early cool/tolerant varieties do well in this region.   I may have to just quit trying to grow them and limit myself to the tried and true varieties that have performed for me despite our challenging growing climate.                   

I am feeling sad about this, but everything else in the garden is doing so well that I have to keep this in perspective. It's one variety of one crop (so far).   By not dwelling on the disappointment and staying in the "thinking" gardener mode, I can consider what I might do differently to minimize this potential in the future.   Death and disease in the garden are part of the package.  I just want to keep it as minimal as possible - especially when it comes to my tomatoes!

For those that may not be familiar with Matron's website "Down on the Allotment" - you might want to check it out.    Her writing is fresh and funny and her garden skills and knowledge are quite impressive.   She has been inspired to host a cyber version of the local county fair / agricultural contest.   To enter you must take a photo of six uniform items (same size & color) arranged on a plate or lined up on a bench, and then submit your entry by email to Matron at Ahhmatron@aol.com.   She will be judging these on July 14th and her decision is final.                 

I know Dan from the Urban Veggie Garden Blog has submitted a particularly nice looking plate of garden peas.   Personally, I was holding out to do a plate of Modern Victory Garden strawberries but I have been unsatisfied with the uniformity of what has been ripening together at any one time.   I have been harvesting about a half pound of strawberries a day - but they vary so much in size and shape that I can never get six really uniform specimens in any given day!    So tonight, I decided to go to plan B and chose to exhibit young Mokum carrots instead.                        

You'll notice that I could not decide whether to show them lined up on a bench or displayed on a plate - so I did both!             

It really is a bit of a challenge to get six of anything to mature at the same time, and have them all be "uniform" in appearance.   I think this is a clever and fun event that Matron is hosting and would encourage you to participate with your own garden's produce.

You may recall back in mid March that I posted about planting a bunch of "sticks and twigs" - referring of course to some bare root nursery stock of strawberries, raspberries, bush pie cherries, and potted cranberries.   With the exception of four raspberry plants, all of the various fruit and berry additions for 2009 have long ago broken dormancy and have taken off.   Six of the ten  raspberries are coming along nicely, but unfortunately I did have four of them that did not come out of dormancy and are going to have to be replaced.   I am hoping I will be able to purchase another four "Heritage" replacements from my local nursery this fall to fill in the gaps created by these non-starters.   The bush pie cherries are .... well....bushing out!... and even had a flush of flowers in late May.   Not sure if they will produce a light harvest or not this year (it's possible with these plants) but I am pleased with their vigor and I am looking forward to next year's pie cherry harvest.   The strawberries are flourishing, and the cranberries are putting on lots of new growth.   I have used some earth staples to peg some of the longer arching branches of the cranberries to the soil. This encourages rooting of these "runners" and helps develop a thick ground cover of cranberry plants.   The older bed of "Ozark Beauty" strawberries is producing steadily right now. We are picking about 1-½ cups (approximately ½ pound) about every other day. The "Tri-Star" strawberries (in the front ½ whiskey barrel planters) are loaded with fruit too, but are about two weeks behind the first group.   This works out pretty well because the harvest is more steady, and staggered out over a longer period of time.   Tonight I picked a full bowl of strawberries and some large lettuce leaves to go on our hamburgers for dinner.   The berries were quickly raided by my husband as I walked back into the house with them - so this picture shows about half of what was originally picked!                 

Two other crops that are coming on strong right now are the zucchini and the shelling peas.   We have harvested baby zucchini (both gold and green) twice now in less than one week's time.                        

The shelling pea pods are fattening up and will soon be ready for the main  harvest. The variety I am growing is "Dakota" which produces a heavy pod set pretty much all at one time so you can easily freeze or pressure can them.   I think these are going to be at their optimum size for picking right before the Fourth of July weekend.                                      

The pea patch is loaded with produce and I am really curious to see how many pounds of peas I get from the first big harvest.

Over the course of Thursday (January 1st) through Saturday (January 3rd) - I was able to get out into the garden for a least a couple of hours each day to make progress on site prep work.  While out and about I took a picture of the "January King" cabbage.   I was unsure how it had fared with the deep freeze and heavy snows of December - but it seems to be growing well and forming nice heads!  There is only three of them planted in this section - but they seem to be holding up to the foul weather despite not having been provided any protection at all.  

Friday and Saturday were particularly productive because I spent each of these days working in an area adjacent to the main garden beds - clearing brush, felling small trees, and removing the lower limbs of some of the larger trees.   I probably have another 2 to 3 more hours of work to do in this area to finish limbing up the two biggest trees in that area.   The product of all this work is greater sunlight exposure during the morning hours for the upper portion of the garden.  Hopefully I will be able to finish this work up next weekend.   Once this is completed, I will move back to the garden expansion project area and return to the task of removing the stumps and roots left behind from the clearing work we did late last fall.    If all goes well, I will get the garden site prep work completed by no later than the end of February.  This gives me the month of March to get the beds constructed in the new garden area.   

I got serious this weekend about planning and budgeting for the construction of new beds in the expansion area.   I walked off the general location of beds and found I can comfortably fit three 4'X24' beds plus one 2'X16' (vertical grow bed), plus a 6'X16' flat growing area (not raised bed) for growing sprawling crops like squash and pumpkins and a new raspberry patch area    In addition to creating these new planting areas, I am planning to put a retaining wall/bed around the area I grew the squash in last year.   It's a good growing area but has a steep slope that needs to be contained.     I priced various materials to make the beds with and have concluded it would be most economical (both short term and longer term) to do the new beds in concrete blocks for the edging.   

Today I did not go out into the garden at all other than to pick carrots for tonight's dinner.   I was pretty dang tired and sore after all the physical work I did on Friday and Saturday and decided it would be good to give myself a break.   I did not lose the day today entirely though.   I updated my garden layout schematic (done in Word using the drawing tools) to add the new beds being created.   I then saved it off to a 2009 garden layout file and began filling in what was to be planted and where for the main spring/summer garden.  I am gaining a lot of growing area with the new beds.   However, I am planning to plant perennial crops in some of the existing older bed areas so it is not a complete gain for annual garden crops.    One of the items I am planting in the older beds are 3 bush pie cherry plants.   I am also adding a second full bed of strawberries, a section of rhubarb, and a small bed of cranberries.    

I am hoping January and February are productive months in getting the new areas ready for planting and getting the first seeds started for the 2009 garden.   I am done with my annual seed, nursery stock, and supplies purchasing and ready to get underway with the "doing" part of the process. 

Happy gardening everyone!