The Modern Victory Garden

It’s not exactly “hot” with high temperatures of mid to upper 70’s, but it is warm and dry and I’ll take it!   The forecast for the next many days is for more of the same.   The change in the garden that has resulted from this modest warm up is rather impressive.   It’s truly amazing what just a little heat can do for the summer garden.   It’s hard to realize how important it is until you go for long periods of time at record setting cool temperatures and see first hand how plants generally just stop growing.   Luckily, we are catching a break and the zucchini, cucumbers, and pumpkins are finally putting some growth on.   The melons and the butternut squash are too, but I fear they are just too little and this recent growth is too late to have any hope of producing anything before the cold rains of fall arrive.   The pumpkins are questionable but possible since they are running well and setting fruit.   The zucchini and cucumbers are not a problem as they will start producing and just keep going for weeks to come.   The zucchini plants in particular have really woken up over the past few days.   There are a couple of squash forming on the plants and I should be able to pick the first ones of the season in just a day or so.   Here is one of the zucchini plants.                            

Reaching out to it from the front right is some of the sugar pie pumpkin vines.                       

While the warm and dry spell is appreciated, it does mean I have to work harder at keeping the garden beds and container grown plants all properly hydrated.   Since returning from my trip to Pennsylvania, I have been cycling through the garden zones on a daily basis - watering.   I use a variety of watering methods in my garden.   Some areas are hand watered using a water wand connected to a garden hose or a large watering can that has been filled from our rain barrels.   I use the hand watering method for all the container grown plants, newly planted seed beds, and small bed areas where any other form of irrigation would just be overkill.   I use soaker hoses for the tomato patch and for several of the planting areas that have bush fruits and berries.   The last method I employ is to use overhead sprinklers.   I am careful not to use overhead sprinkling on plants that are best not wetted (like tomatoes).   My personal preference is for spray style sprinklers that provide a more thorough soaking.   I have a very nice copper and brass sprinkler mounted on a tall post that places the spray head well above the plant foliage and covers a rather substantial amount of area.   In addition, I have assembled my own spray style sprinkler for use in my narrow garden beds (2 feet wide).   I found that the rectangular sprinklers available for sale just covered too broad of an area rather than a narrow strip of garden.   I built this from a few purchased parts several years ago and it has given me great utility.                           

The sprinkler itself is just a hand watering sprayer attachment that I affixed to a “push in” base for sprinklers.   If I cannot find something that does the job I need doing, I will create what I need using items that are readily available.   This particular configuration provides a narrow and long spray pattern which is perfect for my long and narrow vertical grow beds.                        

About a month ago, my husband moved two half-whiskey barrels planted up with strawberries from a shady area in our front landscaping area to the garden.   They were not thriving in their old location and these container-grown strawberries have really perked up with the good sun exposure they now enjoy and the warm up in temperatures.    We have been picking a few odds and ends berries from these plants for about a week now.   They never make it into the harvest totals because they get eaten before we ever reach the house.                               

This little warm up in the garden is much-needed this year even though it means more work for me ultimately – both in watering chores, and in increased harvesting demands.   Bring it on!                              

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Winter will not be boring this year.   The weather has already dished out some serious snow, a frigid cold spell, and prolonged soaking rain events that keep me looking out the window to make sure an ark with pairs of animals is not floating by!   All this and it is only the first week of December.   Forecasts for Sunday and Monday are calling for more serious amounts of rain – potentially measuring in multiples of inches within a period of 24 hours.                                        

Our 2010/2011 winter as shaping up is a function of the La Nina affect, which for the Pacific Northwest is the wetter, colder weather phenomenon that is the flip side of the more common and warmer El Nino pattern.   La Nina occurs when the surface waters near the equator are cooler than normal in the eastern Pacific Ocean and El Nino occurs when those same equatorial surface waters are warmer than normal.   The last La Nina winter we had was the winter of 2007/2008 which resulted in some serious flooding events in our region including the flooding of I-5 around the Chehalis area the first week of December 2007.   The Pacific Northwest had a large storm hit that week.   Just to give you some perspective on it, areas of the Oregon coast experienced wind speeds close to 130 miles per hour (that is hurricane strength folks!) and the City of Bremerton (which is where my work is located and a short drive from our home and garden) received nearly 10 inches of rain in a 24 hour period of time.   Hopefully this La Nina year will be kinder to all of us, but it has all the characteristics of being just as “interesting”.       

The heavy rains have  made the garden beds and walkways waterlogged.   I am glad I have the grow tunnels up protecting the main bed of over wintering spinach, carrots, and green onions, because these relentless cold rains are just as devastating to plants ultimately as hard freezes and snow can be.   However, the irony of it is that the beds do dry out after a period of time and require watering.   I think my spinach bed is close to that point.    I have the opportunity this weekend to pull back the plastic cover for a few hours and let the rain irrigate the bed for me before covering it back up.   However, messing around with a large expanse of plastic sheeting in heavy rain is not a fun task and chances are I will just wait and do a manual sprinkling on it with a hose and wand attachment on a nicer weather day in the future.            

Between errands and appointments on Saturday and heavy rains on Sunday, the garden is not likely to see much of me over this coming weekend.   You can be sure though as I work inside the house on various projects, that I will be checking out the window often to make sure that big boat with pairs of animals does not go floating by unnoticed!                   

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

The garden is a major component of our annual food supply.   I try to manage it accordingly so that we get as much variety as possible, optimize fresh harvests for daily eating, and provide surpluses that can be put by for later use when the fresh harvests are limited.  The amount and types of crops (and when I plant them) are all designed to meet those objectives.   Of course, it never works perfectly because nature will not tolerate that much happiness and success, but by and large we manage to eat well from the garden’s bounty on a regular and consistent basis.   

Growing really fresh, nutrient dense, organically grown food to eat is definitely the priority for me - but there is more to it than just that.   The act of regularly tending to the garden is important as well.   Our modern day lives, with its wealth of labor saving appliances and electronic amusements, generally encourages a much more sedentary lifestyle than our ancestors experienced.   While I don’t yearn to go wash clothes with a rock by the river, I do appreciate that a little manual labor - particularly that which produces something tangible for the efforts – is a good thing for the human animal.   Physical effort, spending time outside getting fresh air and sunshine, and living for a least a few moments each day away from constant bombardment of information and noise our modern world subjects us to- would be reward enough for food production gardening even if we did not also get some really tasty vegetables and fruits out of the deal as well.                      

That sense of “living in the moment” is made even greater when my husband or daughter join me in the garden as well.   While the management of the garden is definitely my domain, I often recruit help from my family or am the lucky beneficiary of them just pitching in.   Tonight was a classic example of this.   I needed to water some seedbeds to keep them moist because the weather (at long last!) is forecasted to really warm up for the next few days.   I also wanted to get the chickens out this evening to let them graze and forage for a while.   It takes quite a bit of effort to keep an eye on six plucky little chickens AND try to do anything else in the garden at the same time.   My husband knows this all too well, and soon joined me in the garden so we could talk and enjoy the fine evening together and so he could help with the chicken wrangling duties.   He has quickly become quite knowledgeable about our flock and their management and has been a great partner to have in this latest undertaking on our homestead.   He kept them all out of trouble and totally entertained for quite some time by grubbing about in and around the compost piles for worms and bugs.                                    

We both benefit greatly from time spent in the garden like this.   It is productive in that we contribute to the garden’s production capabilities (and in this case our chickens too!), but it also strengthens our relationship by spending quality time together working on a task we both benefit from.    Kitchen gardens provide so much more than just good food for our table.           

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

While my morning was tied up with several errands, I was able to spend a little time this afternoon in the garden.   It was actually fortunate that my schedule worked out this way as the morning was overcast and grey, but by 11:30 am the sun was out in force and it turned into a gorgeous afternoon.   I had two primary tasks that I got done today.   First, I watered all of the side garden area.  In general, I use a combination of watering methods in my garden - hand watering (container plantings, new seed beds, and the vertical grow beds), soaker hoses (tomato and zucchini beds), and my favorite overhead sprinkler for the rest of the beds.   I like this sprinkler because it provides a very thorough soaking and covers a fairly good sized area.       

My second task was to remove the horizontal pea trellis and amend the bed in preparation for planting some fall crops.   I spread six large buckets of finished compost over the entire bed area opened up by the recent pea harvest (4 feet by 12 feet).   In addition, I broadcasted some organic all purpose fertilizer over the entire bed area as well.   The broadfork was then used to aerate the entire bed area.   My intention is to finish cultivating this bed on Sunday and then plant it up with the starts of broccoli, swiss chard, and kale that I have grown out and which are now ready to go into the ground.   I had them sitting on the railing of the deck this afternoon to keep them safely out of my way while giving them full access to the beautiful sunshine.       

The three sisters planting is getting to be a jungle.                     

The half runner pinto beans are “running” on everything within reach.    The corn, having gotten off to a slow start this year, is in jeopardy of being overrun by the bean vines.   I plan to use the weed whacker tomorrow to clean up the walkways, but will have to be very careful next to this 3 sisters planting area as the pumpkins are also running and spilling over into the walkway.       

The lettuces continue to really produce this year and I am pleasantly surprised by the work horse performer “Merlot” lettuce, which I grew out from seed shared by Dan at the Urban Veggie Garden Blog.   This lettuce has been harvested hard many times all spring and summer and yet continues to be sweet and produces more and more for harvest.   Take a look at this lovely planter of Merlot lettuces!              

It tastes as good as it looks and I will definitely be growing this variety again.   

Hoping to spend quite a bit of time in the garden tomorrow.   I need to:

• Weed whack the walkways and do a general garden tidy up.
• Side dress the cucumbers and zucchini with a good balanced organic fertilizer.
• Water the container plantings and the back vertical grow bed (bush beans and pole beans).
• Transplant out the fall crops of broccoli, swiss chard, and kale.

The Royal Burgundy bush beans are flowering and will start producing very soon.   The Sunset runner beans and the Blue Lake pole beans are climbing at the moment.   The tomatoes have lots of blooms, small fruits formed, and the Siletz tomatoes have a few that are much bigger and one that is even breaking color.   While I am waiting for them to come online, the sugar snap peas, broccoli, zucchini, onions, garlic, lettuces, celery, kale, and swiss chard are keeping us well fed.                         

What are you doing in your garden this weekend?

It was a very productive day today.   I got most all of my “to do” list completed and had enough time to spare to just sit in the sunshine and admire the fine day.   It really does not get much better than that.                             

The first thing I took care of was weed whacking the garden walkways.   This is not my favorite task but it makes the garden very tidy and removes potential homes for bugs.   The first time I do this each spring is always a bit more of an undertaking because the grass and weeds have been growing all spring and have a big flush of new growth.   I was in need of a shower after I finished, but the garden looks beautiful.                                  

Today was the inaugural trip out of doors for our small flock of chickens.   They were ready last weekend but the weather was wet and cold so we had to put it off.   However, the weather was more than fine today so with my husbands help we moved them and their pen outside.   They had a lovely time; ate bugs, pecked at dandelions, and marveled at the sights and sounds of the bigger world!            

While the chickens enjoyed their time outside, I cleaned the top panels of the greenhouse (removed the caked on pollen) and planted out the cucumbers, zucchinis, and pumpkins.   I also watered all the greenhouse containers of tomatoes and ran the soaker hoses on the beds of tomatoes.   The pumpkins were interplanted with the corn and pinto beans – which finishes up the three sisters planting project.                                                    

Since it was a bright and warm day and was much needed after our very cold weather the preceding several days, I pulled the covers off the tomato beds for the afternoon and let them enjoy some unadulterated sunshine.     

I also took the pepper and basil seedlings outside as well to soak up sun.   The peppers and basil were both re potted last weekend and then moved out to the greenhouse.   Both are doing well but the peppers in particular have finally started to really put on some growth.                             

The potatoes have been breaking the soil surface, which indicates the John Jeavon’s method of planting seems to be working just fine.   I am looking forward to seeing how productive this bed of potatoes will be.     

The peas are also racing along with new growth.   They have reached the lower level of the horizontal support, grabbed on, and are now working towards reaching the second level.                                                    

The only thing on my garden “to do” list that did not get done today – was planting all the bean crops.   Tomorrow is forecasted to be just as beautiful a day as today but my time will be much more constrained as I am delivering tomato starts to my sister in the morning, and have a commitment to attend to with my daughter in the late afternoon.   In between, I am going to try and get the chickens out for another outside adventure and plant at least some of those beans.   I hope you are a having a good weekend in the garden too.

It's been a productive Sunday so far.    I have been working my way through several tasks, but at a slow enough pace that there has been time to savor the truly gorgeous summer day at hand.   Yesterday evening, my daughter and I picked the entire bush bean patch for a second time getting over 6 lbs of produce for our efforts.  This morning after breakfast I set to work to prep and process them for freezing.   While working on freezing the green beans, I also baked a loaf of no knead bread.   By noon, I was wrapped up with the kitchen tasks and was able to move outside for some garden time.           

The garden in early August is a bit of a jungle.   It's hard to do the weed whacking of walkways because the potatoes are starting to lay down and the squash plants are taking over all parts of the garden.   I hope you will overlook the overgrown walkways in the following pictures.       

 Here's a view of the side garden as seen from our deck.                  

The first bed has the early and mid season potatoes which are beginning to lie down.   In a few weeks they will begin really dieing back and by early September will be ready for digging and storage.   The next bed over has two different crops of carrots, parsnips, recently planted kale, and the brussel sprouts. 

Looking at this same area but from the backmost portion of the garden.   

I mentioned before that I have had to give in to using sprinklers for watering chores because the heat has made it impossible to keep up with the watering duties otherwise.   I like this particular sprinkler because it uses a low amount of water, sits up high so it can be used in beds with tall crops, and creates a gentle rain effect that seems to be most effective for soaking the beds.   The plants in the front portion of the center bed are Steins Late Flat cabbages and behind them are the Butte potatoes.  To the right are the fall plantings of broccoli and cabbages, and to the left is the corn patch.               

Also in this portion of the garden is the longest of the vertical grow beds.   It has cucumbers (both slicers and picklers), runner beans, and sugar snap peas growing on the vertical support structures.  The Sunset runner beans are flowering and are creating a nice wall of blooms and foliage.       

The cucumbers are next to them on the left. There are lots of tiny cucumbers on the plants, but so far there is only one slicing cucumber that appears to have been pollinated and is suddenly putting on some decent size.       

Moving around to the back of the house (and the other side of the greenhouse) is the newest section of the garden.                    

This is truly a productive jungle in this back area!   The front bed is the bush bean patch which is producing abundantly at the moment.   In the middle is the squash patch with winter squash, pumpkins, and zucchini.  The pumpkins and winter squash plants have sent their vines into each others areas and consequently the patch is now a mixture with Small Sugar pumpkins growing right along side the Buttercup squash.                      

My cat Sid found a cool retreat in the shade of the tomato patch.   He was hamming it up for the camera!                   

One of the chores I attended to today was the planting up of the swiss chard and kale seedlings.   They were started on the fourth of July but could not wait any longer to be transplanted - as they were getting root bound already.   The swiss chard was planted in containers on the deck that will later this fall go into the greenhouse to over winter.         

I used my new (old) compost sifter for the first time today and sifted up some nice compost to add to the containers to rejuvenate the potting soil in them.                      

Here are the swiss chard plants after being potted up in one of the three containers.                               

The other task I attended to was the pulling of the storage onions.   They have been laid over for a while now and were ready for the harvest.   I laid them out on the sidewalk area next to the shop.   This area is fairly shady so they will be warm and dry but not baked by the hot sun while they dry and cure.                                 

There are 62 bulbs in this pile.   I have half as many sweet onions still in the ground that we will use up first before moving to these better keeping onions.   These were not quite as productive as I would have liked, but it is a decent harvest none the less.                      

The rest of the day will be largely devoted to continuing the watering process.   Plan to harvest some basil and green beans in a little while.   Tonight's dinner menu will be pasta tossed with fresh made pesto (basil, garlic, pine nuts, seasonings, and olive oil), slices of zucchini dredged in fine seasoned bread crumbs and fried up crisp, steamed green beans with a little butter and salt, and roasted chicken thighs.                    

I think I will sit outside for awhile first though, and enjoy the fine summer day with my cat Sid.                          

It's been a hectic week at work.   Very productive but I feel like I have been running non-stop for days - which I guess I have been!   So it feels really good to start the weekend off with an early Saturday morning stroll through the garden, sipping coffee as I go.   How about joining me for a brief morning garden walk?     

It's been warm and going to get much hotter, so the early morning cool feels very pleasant.   No specific garden chores to attend to this morning other than to keep moving the water around.   I have some errands to attend to today, and by the time I wrap those up it will likely be too hot to do much of anything serious in the garden.  Maybe plant out the January King cabbage starts.   However, this is weather more suited for a rest in the chair on the deck (which gets afternoon shade).   It looks inviting even in the cool of the morning.                                       

Do you remember those little broccoli, kohlrabi, and cabbage plant starts I set out just two weeks ago (July 11)?   They looked like this when I planted them up.            

Not much to look at then.  Well here are those same plants two weeks later to the day (July 25).                                        

Despite (or maybe because of?) the warm weather, these brassica family plants are all really going strong.   I added a lot of compost to this bed and the big pea patch preceded these plants - so I think this section of the garden is quite fertile as a result.             

The Sunset Runner Beans are flowering.   I think the flowers are quite beautiful.                 

 I have not grown this variety before and I am looking forward to seeing how well it produces.                                   

The runner beans are not the only beans in the garden though.   I have a huge patch of bush green beans (Jade) that are ready to have their first harvest.    Take a look at these lovely beans!       

I am going to wait until Sunday to do the first picking - so I can get to them in the morning before the high heat of afternoon.                    

Well, it's time to get to those errands.  Thanks for keeping me company on my morning garden walk!

The forecast is calling for hot and dry weather for the next week or more.   This follows many weeks of warm and dry conditions and watering is turning into an every day chore as a result.   It has been my custom not to use sprinklers on the raised garden beds - preferring instead to use either soaker hoses or to hand water with a hose and wand attachment.  I prefer those methods because it avoids watering the garden walkways, putting water only where it is most needed at the plants roots.   However, this past week I have come to the conclusion that unless I quit my job to stay home and water several hours a day, that this is just not going to cut it with the dry/hot summer we are experiencing.   The fact that we expanded the garden considerably this year has a lot to do with the extra time too.   So, for the third day in a row, I have the sprinkler running on a section of the garden tonight.   I still need to hand water the containers and odd sections, but the sprinkler is helping me cover a much larger area with less of my time consumed to do it.   I will just have to deal with the fact that my walkways are going to sprout an overabundance of grass and weeds as a result.   Perhaps next year's big garden project will have to be laying down an impenetrable cover in the walkways for weed suppression as well as aesthetics.    Would love to hear what your recommendations would be (if you care to share them) so I can consider various options before planning that project.                                                     

The sunny warm weather is definitely a positive thing for the garden overall.   Although it is making me work hard to keep everything hydrated, the resulting accelerated growth of the warm weather crops is something to behold.   The corn patch now has many ears of corn formed and many more just forming.             

I skipped growing corn last year due to space constraints and I must say I did not realize how much I missed it until just recently.   My husband adores fresh corn, so he really missed it!                                      

A couple of the Legend tomatoes have just broken color (finally).   It's hard to see the color change (lowest hanging fruit in the photo) because it was getting twilight out when I took the picture and the angle of the fruit makes it hard to see.    I think it should move quickly to a fully ripe status with the high heat forecasted for the next many days.                   

 I am bracing myself for this first big ripe one not to taste very good because it took so long to mature.   Sometimes that seems to create a more bland tomato than one that matures quickly from fruit set to ripening.                 

The real action in the garden is in the squash and pumpkin patch.   I should warn you that it may not be safe to stand for any length of time by my squash patch - because it is engulfing all open areas adjacent to it and the vines and tendrils are latching on to anything they encounter!   The successfully pollinated Buttercup winter squash and Small Sugar pumpkins are growing in huge leaps with each passing day.   Just to give you an idea of how fast these things grow when the conditions are right - here is a Buttercup squash as it looked on Sunday July 19th.                                        

And here is that same squash fruit 3 days later on July 22!                    

Even more dramatic, here is a Small Sugar pie pumpkin as it looked on Saturday July 18th.                                        

 And here is that same pumpkin 4 days later on July 22!                         

Green beans are setting and I am expecting they will be ready for a really big initial harvest just about the time the 95 + degree weather really hits us the hardest.   It always seems to work like that.                           

What is happening in your garden?

Had a visit from my sister and brother in-law this afternoon and we are heading out this evening to go see the new Harry Potter movie, so my garden time was pretty limited this Sunday.   I did get out this morning though and took care of a few items.   Here's largely what I did today:

• Watered the remaining garden beds not covered on Friday or Saturday, excluding the potato beds, which I will catch later this week.
• Mixed some shredded paper into the current compost heap. I have been adding a lot of fresh garden and kitchen trimmings and it was getting too much nitrogen (greens) without enough high carbon additions (browns) to balance it out.
• Sprayed all of the cole crops (cabbages, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and kohlrabi) with Bt solution. It has been two weeks since I last got to this and I noticed lots of white moths fluttering around the brussel sprouts and cabbages last week.
• Hand pollinated some more pumpkins and winter squash.
• Hand pollinated the current ears of corn that are silked.

I should probably take some photos of the hand pollination process, particularly for the corn as it is simple to do and allows full pollination if you have a small patch where wind pollination may not give full coverage.   I will need to do this again with the later maturing plants and will try to remember to take some pictures when the time comes.                             

I noticed today that the bees were back working the squash patch more actively. They were conspicuously absent during the past week or so and I did some hand pollinating to ensure a reasonable fruit set on the pumpkins and winter squash.   I have been doing hand pollinating for several days now and will probably wrap up and let the bees take over (now that they have made a return).  The results of these efforts are that I now have several good-sized pumpkins and winter squash growing.   Here's one of the pumpkins - it's about 5 inches long and 4 inches across.              

Luckily, the pepper plants are self-pollinating (a little shake now and then like tomatoes) and are fruiting prolifically in the greenhouse with little or no intervention on my part.                                     

The brussel sprouts and early cabbages are really putting on a growth spurt right now.   The Primero cabbages have formed nice firm softball sized heads.              

These are one of two red/purple varieties I am growing this year.   The other is Ruby Ball, which is also forming heads but are not quite as well developed as the Primero plants.   The Steins Late Flat Dutch cabbages (green) also have a good beginning on their somewhat flat shaped heads.   All of the cabbages and brussel sprouts were sprayed with Bt solution today (1 Tablespoon in 1 gallon of water in a pressure pump sprayer).        

Before heading in to clean up for our coming guests, I pulled some Nantaise carrots from the second oldest carrot patch.   Most of the pictures I have been showing lately of carrots are of the variety Mokum, which is planted in the oldest patch.   The Nantaise are somewhat bigger, lighter orange in color, and are slightly more tapered in shape.   These Nantaise carrots came from the second planting of the year and are getting very niced sized now.                               

Off to see the new Harry Potter movie and enjoy an evening out.   Hope you had a good weekend in your garden too.

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!