The Modern Victory Garden

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?