The Modern "Victory Garden"

The weather is not very promising for the coming three-day weekend.   Forecast is calling for heavy rain and breezy conditions on Saturday and only mildly better weather on Sunday and Monday.   Fall has definitely arrived in the maritime Pacific Northwest.   Today was actually quite nice though and I took advantage of that this evening to do a few minor tasks in the garden.   Since the forecast is calling for some significant rain, I thought it would be wise to bring the flats of Walla Walla seedlings into the protection of the greenhouse - so they do not drown from too much water pooling in their base tray.   I also removed all of the branches and leaves from the lower half of the brussel sprout plants tonight and put them in the compost pile.   Removing the leaves and stems channels the energy of the plants into the development of the sprouts and provides the sprouts more room to grow larger.                                                 

This morning I picked a big bowl of strawberries.   I am pleased with the quality of the fall crop this year.   Last year, they ended up mostly going to the slugs and/or quickly rotting.   This year however, most of the fruit is ripening up nicely with only minor amounts of losses to slugs and rot.              

If the weather breaks at all this weekend, I need to do the first of the two big potato lifts.   If it is really wet out, I am going to have to postpone it.   However, the mid and early season potatoes are definitely ready to come out of the ground and given my commitments for the following weekend, I really need to do it this weekend if at all possible.                         

The largest head of the Late Flat Dutch cabbage needs to be harvested this weekend as well.                                                    

I also need to pick a bunch of jalapeño peppers that are getting quite large.   If there is enough of them, I hope to be able to do a few pints of sliced pickled jalapeño peppers.   Finally, I need to harvest the largest pumpkin, which has been ripe for a while now.                          

Since the weather is promising to be so gloomy all weekend, I figure it will be a good time to cook the pumpkin and use some of it immediately for a pumpkin pie and then freeze the rest of the puree in packages of 2 cups each - just the right amount for pie making.                      

Here's my garden "to do" list for this long weekend:

• Remove the remaining Siletz and Stupice tomato plants, which have also succumbed to the blight  (Done 9/5/09)
• Plant the big over wintering spinach patch where the tomatoes used to reside (Done 9/5/09)
• Harvest the big ripe pumpkin and process it for pie making - freezing what is not used immediately (Done 9/5/09)
• Harvest the large head of green cabbage and use it in various recipes over the next several days (Done 9/7/09)
• Lift, cure/dry, and store the Caribe, Yukon Gold, and Red Cloud potatoes - setting aside seed stock for next year as well (Done 9/7/09)
• Harvest the largest of the jalapeño peppers and pickle them (Done 9/6/09)
• If there is enough pickling cukes, I may do a batch of dill pickles as well. I am skeptical that I have enough though, as the cool down in the weather has slowed down production quite a lot (Not Enough)
• Spray the cole crops with Bt on Monday after the worst of the rain events is behind us for a while  (Ran Out of Time and Energy!)

Hopefully, I will get at least a few of these items attended to in the next three days along with a big Costco shopping and some other more mundane household chores.   What are your plans for the weekend?

I am somewhat amazed by the continued heavy production I am getting from the sugar snap peas (Cascadia).   It is almost the middle of August and we had a long stretch of quite warm and very dry weather during most of June and July - and yet the sugar snap peas are producing heavily at the moment and are also flowering profusely!   When I went to the garden tonight to harvest items for the evening meal prep, I ended up with over a pound of sugar snap peas, along with lots of Stupice tomatoes (boy is that plant a prolific producer!) and some yellow zucchini.    

Peas love this region and grow really well here.   Which highlights a key concept related to getting maximum output from your food production garden.    

Focus largely on growing crops that are well suited to your climate. 

My climate is maritime pacific northwest.   The temperatures rarely get extreme (either hot or cold) and it is generally moist most of the year.   This is a "great" growing climate for  peas, spinach, lettuce, cabbages, kale, kohlrabi, broccoli, and brussel sprouts.   It's a "pretty good" growing climate for potatoes, carrots, beets, zucchini, parsnips, onions, strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries.   It is generally a "poor" climate for cucumbers, winter squash, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, corn, eggplant, and most beans.      When most people think of a vegetable garden they immediately envision all of those warm weather crops that are in my last list of items.   I love them too and definitely grow them, but despite that my garden has more than 60% of available bed space devoted to crops that are in the first two categories - either a "great" item for this climate or "pretty good".   I am far more likely to have failures with the crops that are challenging to grow in this cool maritime environment, while the ones that suit this climate are almost fool proof to grow.   Those sugar snap peas are a classic example of that.   When I was living and gardeming in the hot and sunny central portion of Washington state, my list was almost completely reversed.   There it was very difficult to grow broccoli, spinach, and peas - but tomatoes, peppers, and melons, were harvested by the laundry basket full, and on an almost daily basis throughout the long summer.                

While I can work extra hard  to grow those warm weather crops here (and I do!), the truth is that I am better served to devote more of my garden space and energy to crops that are naturally more suited to this environment.    It's for that reason that you see such large plantings of spinach, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, broccoli, and cabbages in my garden.    They are my baseline food production items that have a high probability of coming through for us and keeping us fed.  The warm weather crops like the beans,corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and cucumbers are my indulgence in pushing the garden envelope.   I love those crops and don't want to be without them so I am willing to invest time and energy in their cultivation.   However, I make sure that a greater majority of the garden is committed to crops that are more ideally suited to this climate.               

What about your garden?   Are you growing mostly items that flourish where you live - or mostly pushing the gardening envelope with your choices on what to grow?     

Tonight I was on my own to pick the bush green bean patch.   Lately, my daughter has been helping me with the picking chores but tonight she had another commitment.   I picked them much faster working alone (since I was not chatting the whole time!) but it sure was a lot less fun without her company.   The mid-week harvest of beans weighed in at 5 and 1/2 lbs total.                                 

The weather has gone from unbearably hot to almost chilly in just a few short days.   I actually closed up the green house last night because the nighttime temps were forecasted to dip down to the low 50's.   I have Mini Bell peppers and Early Jalapeño peppers growing in the greenhouse.   The fruits are really growing and some of the Mini Bell peppers are starting to ripen, so night time lows below 58 is not good news.    In fact, the Early Jalapeño peppers are just really beginning to form.                                 

Hopefully the weather will soon equalize out to a moderate but warmer level.   Despite the chillier weather, the tomatoes are giving me some nice clusters of ripe tomatoes and the pace is picking up a bit in the number and frequency of tomatoes that are ripening.   Still only harvesting one or two at a time for the moment, but it looks like that is about to start changing - particularly if the weather warms up a bit.                                        

The largest of the pumpkins has gotten very big and is starting to change color already!                                       

Seeing a pumpkin starting to turn orange, combined with the dramatic cool down we have experienced in the past two days, definitely is hinting that fall is not far off.   It really heightens my sense of urgency to get the summer crops in and preserved as much as possible.   Luckily, it appears a lot of the late comer crops are making good progress.   The pickling cucumbers may eventually give me a reasonable sized harvest - judging by the amount of flowers and immature fruit on the vines.   In addition, I noticed this evening that the first runner beans are starting to form!   These are Sunset runner beans.                        

I also have the second wave of strawberries coming on my ever bearers (Ozark Beauty).                                                 

So, it appears that things are continuing to progress on a reasonable time table but I must confess that I will feel much calmer once I am up to my elbows in tomatoes in the kitchen!    Hopefully that will be fairly soon.

It's sweltering hot here this evening.   Cooler outside in the garden than inside the house.   After I got home from work this evening, I quickly fixed dinner and then headed out to the relative cool of the garden to pick the green beans.    My daughter joined me and together we worked for about an hour and  a half harvesting.     When we wrapped up at about 8:30 pm we had picked just a little over 7 lbs of green beans!                        

Had a nice summer evening visit with my daughter as we worked.  Caught up on a lot of things and shared a laugh or two as well.    That is one of the enjoyable things about harvesting and preserving - she always jumps in and helps and we manage to have a good time together while working.        

I need to prep all these beans and get them into the freezer.   Not sure if I am up to getting all that done this evening, but I will get a start on it. before retiring for the night.        

Have you been doing some mid week harvests or preserving? 

This morning after our Sunday breakfast was completed, I hurried out to the garden to get the green beans picked before it became unmercifully hot outside.   This is the first harvest of green beans for this season and it provided just over one pound of beans.               

We will be enjoying these for dinner tonight along with some chicken cooked on the grill and potato salad made from potatoes and onions I harvested today too.   This is over three pounds of Caribe potatoes taken from just one plant.             

I also harvested some sugar snap peas.   Since we have so much already for dinner, I just rinsed the snap peas off and set them out for snacking on raw.   The sugar snap peas provide a nice steady supply of produce for fresh eating needs - so long as I keep them well watered and grow them in a partially shaded area.  

While we are still enjoying some of the cooler season crops (like sugar snap peas), the garden is definitely shifting into the main summer season crops.   I have several large tomatoes ripening on the vine and have already harvested the first ripe tomato of the season.   The zucchini has been providing regularly for many weeks now.   Interestingly enough, the green zucchini have temporarily stopped producing while the gold zucchini is still producing abundantly.   This actually happened last year too and with these same two varieties.   We had gold zucchini for dinner last night along with savory white beans w/ carrot slices and diced onions and baked dill salmon.

Slow to arrive but coming along are the cucumbers and the peppers.          

 The onion patches (both the sweet and storage) have laid down and are beginning the final bulb development stage.                    

After these have dried down a bit more, I will pull them and let them start curing.                                   

The buckwheat green manure / cover crop that I planted several weeks ago is now up and doing a good job of suppressing weeds - developing lots of vegetative matter for later incorporation into the soil.                   

Behind the buckwheat is the Ruby Ball cabbages that are heading up nicely.   Even better heads have formed on the Primero cabbages.             

There are three of them this size and three smaller ones.   This one is pretty much ready to harvest any time now.                                 

It is VERY hot here today and I was grateful to get the green bean picking done fairly early because even with the reasonably early start - I was getting quite done in by the heat.   My cat Sid sat in the shade of the beans and squash plants and gave me friendly encouragement and company while I picked.   I noticed as I wrapped up the harvesting that he had disappeared - but I soon found where he had gone to!   He likes to sit under the Adirondack chair on the front porch where he can watch the world go by in relatively cool shade.   Smart cat!          

I hope you are enjoying a summer day in the garden.

We are continuing to enjoy some warm and dry weather and the forecast calls for it to stay around for a while.   This is good news for the tomatoes, green beans, and pepper plants.   The biggest challenge is to keep up with the watering so that these plants keep thriving and progressing to a state of providing harvestable produce.   While I was busy watering the green beans, peppers, and tomatoes today, I took some pictures of the tomatoes to share with you.   The plants are tantalizingly loaded with lots of green fruits.   I am trying to be patient, but I am really ready for the tomato season to get underway.                                   

The Stupice tomato has already provided the first ripe tomato and has another small ripe one available for me to pick.   More importantly, it has large clusters of tomatoes that are showing indications they will soon be ripening.                       

It is pretty amazing how many fruits this one Stupice plant has on it, and lots of blooms too  . It appears it will be a generous producer throughout the summer.                              

The Legend tomatoes have some really big fruits, which are also showing signs of wanting to start to ripen.                               

 The Siletz plants are not as big as the Legend but they are more plentiful.                                 

And the Celebrity, while a later maturing tomato, is working hard to rapidly catch up to the Siletz and Legend plants.                             

I did not get around to taking a picture of the sauce tomatoes, but they are plentiful now too.                                 

Hopefully soon I will being seeing red in the garden!

Yesterday's hot muggy weather ended rather abruptly last night with thunder and lightening.   The storm brought cool and overcast weather today, but very little by way of rain.   So after I wrapped up some needed grocery shopping, I spent just a little time this afternoon finishing up the watering that I largely completed yesterday.           

While I was watering, I noticed a little bird that was flitting in and out of the celery and swiss chard plantings.   It appears he was eating insects off of the plants, so this little fellow is quite welcome to hang out in my garden.    

The swiss chard plants are just about ready for another hard harvest. They are in the older vertical grow bed with a "Sunset" runner beans growing up the vertical support structure behind them.            

I really like "Bright Lights" swiss chard because not only is it quite pretty to look at with the magenta, red, yellow, and orange stalks - but it is also very good tasting.                                    

The celery is mature enough now to use for fresh eating and also can be harvested anytime for freezing too. I may tackle slicing up and freezing some celery next weekend.   This year's crop is not quite as nice as last year's, but it is still respectable looking.                         

The corn patch is getting some size on it and the "Bodacious" corn plants are starting to tassel already.                                  

Along with tassels, they are also starting to form the beginnings of ears of corn too.                             

Earlier today I harvested some strawberries for our Sunday brunch and some onion, parsley, and basil to make Italian Bean Salad - preparing it early so that it would have sufficient time to marinate/chill in the refrigerator.   This afternoon I harvested some carrots to also go with the dinner meal.       

The Sunday dinner menu is crisp roasted split chicken breasts (free range local chicken - seasoned with garlic and a little salt), Italian Bean Salad, and steamed carrot slices with a little butter/salt.                  

I hope you had a good weekend and enjoyed some time in your food production garden.

Had errands and commitments to take care of this morning and early afternoon, but I did manage to get into the garden for several hours later on.   Not much that really needed to be done, so most of the time was spent sitting on the deck, reading a good book, and soaking up some warm sunshine.    Yes, it was bright, warm, and beautiful today.   Gorgeous in fact.  

I thinned out one of the beds of carrots and ended up with a nice sized bunch for the effort.   I also harvested  2 "Gold Rush" and 2 "Sungreen"  zucchinis and a couple of good sized green onions.   All together they made a nice foundation for the evening meal and some fresh eating/snacking.      

The onions and zucchini went into an Italian Vegetable Stir-Fry and accompanied grilled beef franks for dinner tonight.                 

I hope you had some sunshine today too.

We are into our fourth straight week of sunshine and warm weather.  This is unusual for us so early in the summer but welcome nonetheless!  There is a downside to the warmth and dryness though, in that the garden beds are all drying out very quickly and require quite a bit of attention for just watering needs.  Luckily, the beds of broccoli and peas are so thick and developed that the plants have formed a living canopy over the soil surface, which helps to keep it cooler and slow down the water loss.  As a result, the peas do not seem at all phased by the warm temps and indeed have been flourishing.  So much so that I would have to say that this year's pea patch may very well be the best one I have ever grown.  Not sure if it is the new horizontal support system I created this year, or the bed location, or the unusual weather itself that is the cause - but the results are astounding.  The entire bed is lush and covered in blooms or pea pods.  Here are just a few of them on the outer edge of the bed.                                                       

The broccoli is really producing well now too. I took a picture of one of the heads just before I harvested it (and several others) for the evening meal.    

I steamed the broccoli and served it with just a pat of butter and salt to taste.  The broccoli accompanied some crisp roasted free-range chicken thighs, Italian Bean Salad (made with fresh basil, onions, and parsley from the garden) and warm crusty slices of freshly baked No Knead Bread with butter.            

The summer garden is growing well and beginning to yield a greater variety of produce.  What ever is "on" in the garden dictates the dinner menu (for the most part) and with the growing (pardon the pun!) choices in the garden - meal options in the summer tend to be more interesting and flavorful.             

I hope you were able to enjoy some of summer's flavor today.

I am taking some vacation days from work through next Tuesday. The primary reason is to work in a road trip to go see my parents and some of my siblings in Spokane, Washington. Because my daughter is still in school yet, she and my husband are not going to be able to join me. Together they will hold down the homestead. My husband has promised to water the recently planted seedbeds in my absence. So it will be a solo road trip this time for me.  Big mug of good coffee, satellite radio, and a full tank of gas in the Honda Fit - I think I am ready to roll!                                 

Plan to hit the road this morning around 9 am and will stop in Ellensburg to have lunch and a short visit with my in-laws. I always enjoy a visit with them and am looking forward to seeing how their garden is doing this year. I will be back on Sunday afternoon, which gives me a couple more days of vacation time to relax and catch up on things in the garden.               

This morning I am wrapping up making sure the garden beds are all thoroughly watered before I leave.  We have been having very warm weather and are into the third week of no rain - so everything is drying out quite quickly. Having to water is a small price to pay though for how the garden is thriving with the sunshine and warm temps!                        

The "Sunset" runner beans are up!                                               

The broccoli is heading up.                           

And the pea patch is a solid mass of blooms at the moment.                               

I will have peas to pick very soon.                                        

Enjoy the coming weekend and I will post an entry shortly after getting back updating you on how the trip went and how the garden fared in my absence.