The Modern Victory Garden

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

I have a quite a few good sized garden beds available to me for planting up my garden, but I invariably use a lot of container plantings to augment the traditional garden crops.   Containers allow me to plant extra plants I have that would otherwise end up on the compost pile, they allow me to use some small areas in the garden that get good sun but are not good candidates for a regular raised bed to be installed, and containers can be kept in the greenhouse until the weather really gets warm before moving outside and can be again brought inside in the fall to extend the crop’s harvest.   Lots of reasons to use containers for planting vegetables and berries even if you have a large garden area available to you.                                   

I use some containers for more permanent plantings – such as my pots of herbs.   This is some chives that I recently replanted, French thyme, and my cat’s personal pot of catnip (yes he is spoiled!).                                   

I also have several large containers on our side deck that are planted in blueberries.   These plants have really gotten big this year and are loaded with blooms and small berries.   I need to get some netting over them soon if I want to keep some of the future harvest from the birds.                             

The deck is a great spot to grow things on my property as it gets good sun exposure and would represents a colossal waste of space if it did not serve more than the one purpose of providing us a place to sit and commune with nature every once in a great while.   Right next to the blueberries is my rectangular pot of Merlot lettuces.   They don’t look very photogenic at the moment because we have been continuing to harvest from them for many weeks and I cut a bunch of it as recently as yesterday.                        

Just a bit further along where the deck wraps around to the back of the house, I have four containers of Sweet Italian peppers growing in medium/large pots.   It has not been a good year for peppers and basil because of the constant wet and cool conditions, but these container planted peppers are holding their own despite that.                                            

Tucked into a sunny corner of the garden are four containers of super early started Siletz tomatoes.   They were in the greenhouse for a very long time before I finally moved them out of doors.                                    

Inside the greenhouse I have five more containers of tomatoes growing – all of them Celebrity.   Celebrity is a robust semi determinate tomato that reliably produces a nice mid to late season tomato but needs the extra season extension of the greenhouse to ensure fruit maturity in our climate.   They always grow a huge main stem that is reminiscent of a tree trunk.              

Not exactly crops in pots, but the chinese cabbages, broccoli, swiss chard, and kale that I started about a week and a half ago are all up and growing well.   I moved them out of the greenhouse today to let them soak up some sunshine (briefly while it was here!).                                                      

Growing crops in pots is a great way to add greater variety to your harvest options and allows you to maximize available growing areas that would otherwise be underutilized.   Do you grow vegetables or fruits in pots?

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?

What a gorgeous day we had today!   It got up to the mid 50’s and everything is breaking dormancy fast.    I had to run some errands this morning, so I did not get out into it until after lunchtime - but the few hours I was outside this afternoon was heavenly.

Because we had late blight hit the garden last year, I did not save any of my potatoes for seed stock and chose instead to buy all new certified seed stock this year.   I ordered my potatoes from Ronniger Potato Farm LLC because they had a good selection, good reputation, and the best prices.   Friday my big box of potatoes arrived; 10 lbs of Yukon Gold; 10 lbs of Caribe; and 25 pounds of Russet Burbank.   

The front bag is the Yukon Gold and the back bag is the Caribe and underneath the two bags you can just glimpse the Russet Burbanks.   I opened the box and checked them today, but tomorrow when I have a little more time I will lay them out to begin chitting and do a count to see if I will need to cut them into smaller pieces.   I am going to use the 4-foot by 32-foot bed for the potatoes this year and will be planting them using the John Jeavon’s method of planting potatoes (done at the same time you double dig a bed) spacing them using a within row spacing of 9 inches and approximately 9 inches deep into the soil.   For a 32-foot long bed, I should end up with 42 rows at 9-inch intervals and 5 seed potato pieces per row if spaced 9 inches apart.   So my calculations come up that I need 210 to 215 potato seed pieces to do this bed in that manner.   These look like really nice seed potatoes and I am anxious to get them set out to begin forming sprouts.

The main task I worked on today was prepping the big 4-foot by 40-foot bed for the beginning of the planting season.   Specifically, I used the U-Bar to aerate the entire bed and then did a light cultivation and raking.   At the end of the bed, I also worked in some general-purpose organic fertilizer into a 4-foot by 12-foot section of the bed. This area will be the 2010 pea patch and I am planning to plant them tomorrow since the soil temperature is more than warm enough.   Here’s the bed after I finished the prep work.   The closest end in the photo below is where the pea patch will be going.   

Today I also took down the grow tunnel cover from the overwintered bed of carrots and parsnips.  You can see it in the photo above.    I intend to finish harvesting what remains of these in the next several weeks to clear out the bed for the coming potato crop that will go in that bed.   I need to similarly use up the last few January King cabbages from this bed to also get them out of the way for the potatoes.    

Other tasks I got to today included taking the U-Bar and gently aerating and fertilizing the raspberry patch – adding a layer of compost on the surface after I was completed.   I also rotated the six packs of seedlings in the trays under the grow lights to ensure that plants on the ends get a chance to be in the middle for a while - where they enjoy a more complete exposure to the grow lights.   I took the opportunity while swapping the packs around to brush the small seedlings lightly with my hands to help them “sturdy up”.                        

In the greenhouse, the kale and Chinese cabbages I planted out last weekend are doing well and the slow growing mache is starting to get a move on and produce more vegetation.   About the time the carrots and parsnips are finished up, these greens should be ready to start harvesting lightly.                          

That is it for today.   Tomorrow I am going to plant the pea patch and put up my horizontal grow support structure.    Forecast is for another gloriously beautiful day so it will be good to have an excuse to be out in it!

Last spring we put in a new raspberry patch as part of the big garden expansion project.   Ten bare root Heritage raspberries were planted in mid March 2009.   We were right in the midst of clearing the expansion site area and constructing new garden beds, so the planting up process was kept to a bare minimum.   In fact, we did not even put a support structure in place for the raspberries and opted to use some tomato cages and ladders to support the raspberry canes for the first year instead.   The plan was to come back in the fall or following spring and finish up with the support structures.   Here’s what they looked like last year when we first planted them up.         

And here is what they look like now, just a little less than one year later. The area needs weeding and the canes need a little pruning.                          

We had fifty percent survival rate on the bare root nursery stock in that five have grown out and five never even broke dormancy.    Not very happy with that outcome so this spring when I ordered the five replacement Heritage bare root plants – I went to another source for my nursery stock.   Hopefully the next five will have a better success rate.                               

In addition to replacing the failed plantings and constructing a support structure, there was another problem that revealed itself this past year that also needed correcting.    Specifically, the area the bed is planted on is quite sloped and even with drip irrigation it was difficult to keep the plants properly watered because the run off was so severe down the slope.   Knowing the replacement bare root plants will be arriving within the next few weeks, I decided to get going on the first phase of rejuvenating this raspberry patch.   The focus today was on creating a terraced bed for both rows to correct the slope problem, weeding and grubbing out the beds, and pruning the prior year canes back to the growing points.

I have a stack of timbers behind the shop left over from last year’s garden expansion project.   I had been toying with the idea of using them to make beds in the green house but have sinced talked myself out of that idea so these were available to be used for the raspberry patch rejuvenation project. 

The temporary supports and drip irrigation line were removed.   I then dug out the lower edge of the bed, laid out the timbers and anchored them into the soil using stakes and tamped down dirt.   The bed area was then weeded and cultivated and raked level.   The last step was to do a quick pruning - taking off dead sections but leaving the one-year-old wood that had growth so that it will produce a summer harvest for us.     Here’s how the patch looked when I wrapped up for the afternoon.                            

Phase 2 of the raspberry bed rejuvenation project will have to wait until after the replacement plants arrive.   When they get here, I will plant them out and then fertilize the entire bed, reinstall the drip irrigation line, and put down a thick layer of compost over the beds.   The final task will be to then construct the supports for both rows.   Got the hardest part of the project completed today and I think they will do much better with this simple fix. 

Yesterday I planted up a 4-foot by 12-foot section of garden bed in spinach using one of my new planting jigs.   I took pictures as I went but am going to wait to post about it until I am sure it worked as expected – which will be confirmed when the new plants begin emerging.   Hopefully within the next several weeks I will have a complete report for you on this.                    

Do you have any garden “fixes” you are attending to this year?

Between my crazy work schedule this past week and a string of significant rain/wind storms that have pummeled our region,  I have been unable to get very much time in the garden of late.   However, today (at least for part of the day) we got a brief let up in the weather and I was able to get outside for a while and enjoy a little “garden time”.   My cat Sid joined me and immediately went to spend some quality time with his potted catnip plant.     

He loves having his own special “cat” garden!   The herbs in pots (including Sid's catnip) will move into the greenhouse when the weather starts getting down to freezing levels at night.   Right now we are hovering in the mid 30’s to low 40’s for night time temps but it will not be long before we see some colder temps.        

Amazingly enough, the raspberries are continuing to ripen.               

I picked about a half cup of them this afternoon to snack on later.   I also took a little time to remove the leaves of the western red cedars that have been dropping into my onion bed - creating a fairly thick mat over the entire bed.  Once removed, I was able to really see how the onion and garlic were doing so far.   The Walla Walla onion seedlings I planted earlier this fall seem to be holding their own but are not showing much top growth.   I hope they are busy working on building a strong root system instead.   In that same garden bed, the garlic (both elephant and regular) are sending up their initial shoots, and so are the multiplier onions.                           

In the greenhouse the onion sets I planted up are starting to emerge too.  The multiplier onions and the onion sets will both provide green onions early next year about the time the storage onions have run out.               

Did not get to spend a very long time outside today because the break in the weather was actually quite brief.   Another storm system is settling in with gusting winds and rain.   Before going inside, I harvested enough broccoli side shoots to use for the evening meal prep.   There is only my husband and myself for dinner tonight (daughter is babysitting today), so we only need a small amount.           

This afternoon I processed yet another pumpkin.   It was one of the smaller sized ones and provided 4 cups of puree.   I used 2 cups immediately to make a pumpkin pie with and froze the other 2 cups for future pie making needs.   We are not hosting the Thanksgiving dinner this year, but will instead be going to my sister and brother in-laws house in Tacoma for the meal.   My contribution will be several pumpkin pies made from our garden grown pumpkins and cranberry sauce made from some fresh northwest grown cranberries.   I have several more storage pumpkins yet to process and will be doing at least one more this week to make the Thanksgiving pies from.                              

Are items from your garden going to make it to the Thanksgiving dinner table this year?

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?

August was a whiz bang harvest month with a final tally of 140 pounds of harvest -  which was 1 pound more than the entire tally of February through July combined!    Contributing to the big increase in production were the bush green beans (17.25 lbs), cabbages (10.50 lbs), corn (6.50 lbs), onions (11.50 lbs), potatoes (9.25 lbs), tomatoes (38.00 lbs), and zucchini (12.75 lbs).   Obviously the tomato tally was pre-blight infestation.  I still have a few plants producing tomatoes for me and there are tomatoes ripening off the vine in the garage (salvaged from the plants before they were removed) - so there will be yet a little more tomato poundage added to the tally in September, but not very much.                               

September should be another oversized harvest month because of the big potato bed  lift that will occur plus quite a few of the pumpkins and winter squash will be ready for harvest in the coming month too.                       

Did not do alot of harvesting this evening as I had items in the fridge from the Saturday harvest that needed using up.   However, after dinner I did pop out to the garden and picked 2 pounds of tomatoes  - mostly Stupice which is still producing heavily despite obviously coming down with the blight now too.    In addition, I picked a selection of blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries for some after dinner snacking.                                   

More often then not, we tend to just pick and eat the berries in the garden and they never make it into the house for weighing.  Consequently, the tally for berries is definitely understated.   I don't want to give up the garden snacking though just to get a perfectly accurate tally.                     

Was August a good harvest month in your garden?

There are lots of jobs to do in the heat of summer to prepare for the coming winter.   I tend to focus on the garden production - making sure the extra produce is preserved for future use.   My husband generally focuses on the routine household maintenance and repairs, particularly those that need attention while the weather is dry and warm.   Lately, he has been busy wrapping up the deck staining and preserving project.   Another project we both try to get done around the end of August (or first part of September) is getting the wood supply in and cleaning the woodstove chimney pipe.   We have a local individual whom we buy wood from each year. Since we prefer to stack it ourselves we have it delivered as a "dump" and then take it from there.   This evening when I got home from work I found that our annual supply had been delivered.                                 

Since I am really ramping up on garden preserving work, and my husband is still working on the staining and painting projects, our daughter has volunteered to help us out with the wood moving and stacking project.   Collectively we all pitch in where our talents or time are most needed and everything seems to get done eventually.   We still have the chimney cleaning to do, but it can wait a few weeks while we wrap up these other items.                                                  

It has warmed back up again and the tomatoes are responding.   Lots of ripe ones this evening and the Viva Italia sauce tomatoes have a flush of fruit that is breaking color.   I picked almost six pounds tonight of Legend, Siletz, and Stupice tomatoes.   I am setting them aside for a day or so because there are quite a few more that will be ripe tomorrow or Friday and I think I should have enough (if I just wait a day or so) that I can process a full canner load of quart jars of diced tomatoes.   When the sauce tomatoes are ripe I will really be in business!               

I have an unusual pumpkin in the squash patch that I thought I would share with you this evening.   It is a Siamese twin in that two pumpkins are growing from the same stem and vine, fused together.    I have had many odd shaped squash and pumpkins in the past, but this mutation is a new one for me.

The remaining pumpkins are all quite normal and are in various stages of growth - from relatively small and green - to this large one that is really getting quite orange already.                                    

I think we are going to enjoy lots of pumpkin pie, spiced pumpkin bars, and custards this winter.                                      

The ever-bearing strawberries are back producing again.   The second round of fruit production is always less robust than the initial late June fruiting.   To add to the strawberries we also have blueberries from our container plants that are ripening, as well as the blackberry season that is getting underway.                         

I hope your week is going well and that you are getting some time in your gardens too.