The Modern "Victory Garden"

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.

Goodness it got warm in a hurry today!   I had several things to get done in the garden so I got an early start to avoid working during the hottest part of the day.   In large part, I spent most of my time watering beds and containers, but worked in other garden tasks between watering sections - to break up the workload and keep it less repetitive.                       

I moved two of the wire compost bins next to two other full bins I have currently going.   These two bins will be the next ones to be filled up.   The finished pile that was in one of these relocated bins, is now just heaped and  easily accessible for usage.   Indeed, I used a fairly good amount of it already today - preparing the garden bed that had previously held the pea patch for planting up.   I added a generous layer of finished compost from the heap and broadcasted some general-purpose organic fertilizer over the bed.   This was then aerated and lightly cultivated.   Into this prepped bed I planted some hardened off fall cole crop transplants - 24 broccoli ("Umpqua"), 12 kolhrabi ("Koliribi"), and 12 cabbages ("Beira Tronchuda").   Granted, these plants don't look like much at this point, but they will soon fill this bed and should provide a good fall/winter harvest crop.         

I noted yesterday that the regular garlic and the multiplier onions were ready to be pulled and cured.   I went ahead and harvested both of these crops today.            

The multiplier onions are not big but they provide a nice spring crop of green onions that bridge the last of the prior year onions in storage and the arrival of the new season onion crop.   Each bulb that is planted in the late fall goes on to produce a cluster of onion bulbs.                  

After I took this picture I laid them out in our covered breezeway between the house and the garage to dry and cure.   The breezeway is a good place for this because it has excellent air circulation and is covered so the bulbs will not get wet if a rainstorm occurs.    I am waiting to weigh this harvest until the tops are dried down and removed.                             

I picked strawberries, snap peas, and some zucchini today too.   All of these crops are each producing a regular almost daily harvest.   The strawberries have been particularly good this year and are still loaded with immature fruit and flowers - promising a reasonably long harvest period too.    Each day I get one or two really huge strawberries, plus a large collection of medium and smaller ones.   Just to give you an idea of how big these are, I took this picture holding one in my hand this morning.   They are red throughout and very sweet.                 

I ate this almost immediately after taking the picture!   Could not resist the temptation of such a pretty piece of fruit.                      

Have you been working in your gardens today too?

Summer is here and the living is easy.   Well....summer is definitely here, not so sure about the easy living part!   Things have warmed up again and keeping the garden beds watered is turning back into a full time chore.   It's important to stay on it though - as so many of the crops are at critical growth stages right now.   Lots of items are forming or maturing fruit and need to be kept hydrated to ensure no interruptions occur in that process.             

The pumpkins and winter squash are both setting fruit now.   This is one of many "Small Sugar" pie pumpkins that are forming.                  

The vines are lush and the tiny fruits are abundant.   My biggest challenge with the squash patch is going to be keeping it from taking over the neighboring beds.   I swear that you can watch the vines grow if you are willing to just sit still and watch for a few minutes!                   

But the real stars of the garden at the moment are the strawberries!         

Long holiday weekend coming up.   Great weather in the forecast too, which means I will be spending most of it catching up on the watering chores!

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.