The Modern Victory Garden

I grew artichokes for the first time ever this year.   Started them from seed during the late winter months, gave them a suitable period of “chilling” in colder outdoor temps to force first year bud development, and then planted them up in large outdoor pots.   They produced a light harvest for me, which was most satisfying and whetted my appetite to grow more of them and improve the harvest levels.   When I started out on this small adventure of planting something new (to me), I did my usual practice of reading up on the matter to educate myself on this plants particular needs and requirements.   I learned a lot about this interesting plant in the process, but the most important thing I found out was that the ideal growing conditions for artichokes are cool and moist summers with mild winters.   I am in zone 8b (maritime pacific northwest) and the best description of our climate is “cool and moist summers with mild winters”!   Obviously this is a plant that is well suited to my region's growing climate.   In fact, if I use sufficiently deep winter mulch, the artichokes may survive as perennials.   The mulch is needed to protect the roots from deep freezing during the few weeks a year that we get below freezing temperatures.   Even if I am unable to successfully grow them as a perennial, I ( and others in climate areas colder than Zone 8 ) can easily grow them as annuals, so long as they are started ahead of time and the transplants have 90 to 100 frost-free days to grow in.                          

Since I want to keep growing these, I created a permanent new bed for them earlier this fall and transplanted my large container grown plants into it.   It was heavy work to get them out of those large containers and set in place and the plants got knocked about a lot during the process, but they bounced right back and gave me some strong new shoots.   Here they are approximately two months later on November 6th.                      

Artichokes are heavy feeders and need consistent and thorough watering.   Growing them in containers this past summer worked just fine but I expect that the plants will do better growing in the ground with the soaker hose on them to keep them well hydrated.   I used worm casting compost to amend their new bed and planting holes with.   Now, to put them to bed for the winter, I top dressed the bed with a thick layer of rough finished compost and then layered on lots of fall leaves for insulating protection.   I used quite a bit of compost because it not only served the function of adding a layer of insulating mulch, but it also will provide a slow release of nutrients and soil improving humous to the growing bed.        

Notice the hens helping me out there?!   They are wistfully looking at that newly laid down compost wishing they could get to it so they could scratch out some worms and bugs.                                

Next, I took the wheelbarrow out to the front yard and raked up some fallen leaves from one of our Japanese maples.                        

These were then layered on above the compost mulch to create a deep blanket of insulating mulch.                                        

Another hen in that picture, just sure there are bugs to be had in that pile of leaves – if only she could reach them!   This covering is more than sufficient for most winters, but we are in for year two of La Nina this winter and odds are good we are going to be colder and wetter than normal (again), so I would prefer to cover this twice as deeply for extra protection.    I am going to have to wait though, as I raked up all of the leaves for tree number one and the remaining two trees are still largely hanging on to their fall leaves.                                      

We are forecasted to have some gusty winds on Friday, so I won’t have to wait long to get another load of leaves to finish off that bed.   What leaves I don’t use for the artichoke bed, I plan to use for mulching the tree kale/collard plants.                               

In addition to tending to the artichoke plants, I have also been working on ripening my pumpkins off of the vine.   I had a horrible squash year in 2011.   The abnormally cool summer caused everything to be delayed by at least two to three weeks from normal, and the long growing season warm lovers like pumpkins and winter squash were even more impacted than the other garden crops.   My butternuts just started really setting fruit just in time for the cold fall rains to arrive.   The pumpkins at least set their fruit earlier but were still very late and definitely not ripe when the cold rains started taking the plants down.   At first I moved them into the greenhouse hoping the temperatures inside would be warm enough with the passive solar to finish ripening them off.   This picture was taken on October 23rd.

Not long after this picture was taken though, I determined that the night time temps were dipping down too low to allow the ripening process to progress, so I brought them inside the house and put them on my front window sill.    Here they are on Sunday November 6th.                  

The largest continues to quickly ripen and will likely be ready for cooler storage (or use!) and inclusion in the harvest tally by the end of this coming weekend.   Obviously, I much prefer to have my pumpkins ripen in the patch, but they definitely can be ripened off the vine if needed -  so long as  they were sufficiently mature enough and if placed where they are exposed to sunlight and warm temps.   The extra effort is worth it to maximize my pumpkin patch production despite our strange summer season.                                                      

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener