The Modern Victory Garden

Saturday was spent largely on errands and appointments and only a little time was spent in the gardens.  So today (Sunday) was the day for getting most of my "to do" list done.   I started off by tackling the spinach patch.   This needed to be harvested and then the produce blanched and frozen.    Here's a picture of the patch before I began harvesting.                      

I like to use a "cut and come again" harvest on greens like spinach.   If you look at the previous photo you can see low areas which are actually spots that I previously harvested from that are growing back again.   I use a large serrated bread knife to essentially mow the produce for harvest.   Here's some pictures to show you what I mean.                                          

The spinach patch after harvesting is cut down to within about 2 inches of the soil surface.   After harvesting it hard like this - it is a good idea to give it a good watering and some fertilizer   I like to use a fish emulsion drench as it gives it a good shot of nitrogen and is immediately available to the plants for uptake.                                                                                         

From this section of bed, I harvested enough spinach to almost fill a five gallon bucket.                                  

I then fill the bucket full of water and swish it around good to rinse off the produce.   Once it has been thoroughly rinsed, I drain the water away.         

This is now ready for blanching and freezing.  The following sequence of photos walks you through that process.                

First you need to prep your work area and tools for the job.   A large pot of water needs to be set to boil and a metal mesh colander needs to be set out and ready to use.                                                                                    

In addition, you need to prepare an ice water bath.    Put a stopper in the sink drain and then fill with ice and water.                                                  

Next you place the produce (spinach) into the metal mesh colander and then immerse it into the pot of boiling water.   Use a large spoon to push the produce down into the boiling water and then cover  with a lid.   Boil for approximately 1 minute until the produce is wilted down and is a bright color.   The idea is not to cook it thoroughly - but just to start the cooking.    

Remove the the colander from the boiling water and then immediately immerse it into the waiting ice water bath.   Swish the colander around in the ice water to ensure the middle portion is immediately cooled down.   The important thing is to immediately stop the cooking process. 

Once cooled, remove the colander from the ice water and let drain in the sink.   I like to gently squeeze the greens to remove excess water before packaging them up in properly labeled freezer safe packages.                   

I ended up with four 1 lb packages of spinach for the freezer.   

The rest of the day was spent doing some garden clean up and maintenance tasks.  I spent about an hour and a half using the weed whacker to knock down the weeds and grass from the garden walkways.   Next, with my husband's help, we tackled cleaning the greenhouse panels.  A lot of pollen, dirt, and mold gets deposited throughout the year and diminishes the amount of sun that can reach the plants inside.   Here's how it looked before we started.                                                                      

And here it is after we finished.      You can see the walkways were cleaned up between the two photos as well.

That's about it for today.   I have a few more tasks to take care of this weekend, but the really big chores are now done.   I hope you were able to spend time in your gardens today too.