The Modern Victory Garden

HARVEST MONDAY

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what people are producing from gardens from so many different regions, and how they are using it.   Check it out and join in too!                                      

My daughter flew back to Pennsylvania late Friday night, which brought to an end our week of celebrating the holidays and enjoying her being home for a visit.   We ate out quite frequently in the past week but did prepare some home cooked meals too.   Most of those home cooked dinners however, used items in storage or frozen rather than fresh harvest items from the garden.   I did harvest some lettuce leaves to top our New Year’s eve blue cheese hamburgers with, and on Friday I harvested some green onions to use in combination with frozen red peppers (diced) and garlic from storage to make spaghetti and meatballs.   The lettuce leaves and green onions were not enough to make my minimum harvest tally weight however, and I never got a picture of them.                                  

Sunday afternoon I dug up some parsnips.   These will be cooked by simply peeling and slicing them and then sautéing them.   If I don’t use them for the Sunday night dinner preparation, I will use them for Monday’s evening meal.                                    

Harvest totals for the week of December 26th through January 1st (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Lettuce & Greens 0.00 lbs (not enough to make harvest tally weight)
• Onions (green) 0.00 lbs (not enough to make harvest tally weight)
• Parsnips 1.00 lbs

Total For Week 1.00 lbs

Total Year to Date 1.00 lbs                                           

Eggs collected this week – 10                                                 

KICKING OFF THE NEW YEAR

I spent the first day of 2012 kicking off the new garden season.   First thing I did was to go through my seed box and discard the used up packets (with just a few seeds remaining) and items that were getting very old and shop worn.   I had donated much of my extra seeds to the Kingston Farm and Garden Co-op Giving Garden throughout 2011, so there was only a small amount of usable items to carry forward into 2012.    I then did an inventory of my other supplies noting what needed to be purchased to restock.   There actually was quite a good supply on hand of most regularly used items so the list was pretty small this year.   Last week, I had prepared my 2012 garden plan/layout so my seed requirements were established.     Armed with all of this information I then placed my annual seed and supply orders.     

On Sunday afternoon I spent an hour or so out in the garden and weeded the bed of cranberry plants and removed spent vegetation from two containers of strawberry plants.   While I was out puttering in the garden, I checked on the lettuce and dwarf pac choi seedlings I transplanted out on Friday afternoon.    These seedlings had spent about a week being hardened off before transplanting by leaving them for longer and longer periods of time in the unheated greenhouse.    All of the lettuces and a few of the dwarf pac choi plants went into the containers in the greenhouse.   The majority of the dwarf pac choi were planted into an open section under the long covered grow tunnel.   I took the precaution of sprinkling some Sluggo around the newly transplanted items because the slugs have been particularly fierce this winter.    The young plants seem to be doing okay despite the colder weather the past few days.   

It’s hard to see in the last picture, but if you look carefully you can see baby carrots which are also growing in several of the containers in the greenhouse.   I just tucked a few of the lettuces and dwarf pac choi in with them where there were some open spots.                                

I also checked on the onion plants I direct seeded late in August that are over wintering in the garden (unprotected).    They are doing remarkably well.   I hope they hang in there through January, which is usually our coldest month of the year.                                                    

The last thing done to wrap up the old year and ring in the new, was to finalize the 2011 harvest tally recap and set up the harvest spreadsheet for not only the new month but for the new year as well.   While a bit of a hassle to keep these kinds of records, I do find it useful to have comparative information to refer back to periodically.     2011 was a particularly low production year for the garden due to the abnormally cool summer we had.   I certainly hope 2012 gets us back to a more typical level of production.                                                               

There will be more onions and some early spring greens to start in the weeks ahead.   Keeping a pipeline of hardy greens going to plant out in the covered grow tunnel and the unheated greenhouse as other items are harvested and removed is important to keep fresh harvests coming as we slowly crawl our way out of the darkest days of winter towards the longer and warmer days of spring.   It should be noted that we put the shortest day of the winter behind us last week, so it is all uphill from here!    

Happy New Year Everyone! Let’s make it a great one.                   

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener