The Modern Victory Garden

Today was the last day of my week long vacation from work. Most of my time off was spent traveling to and from Spokane and visiting family there. However, Monday and Tuesday I kept reserved for just decompressing and catching up on some much needed sleep. It was heavenly and the weather could not have been more perfect for puttering around in the garden.      

The warm temps and sunshine has been like a shot of adrenaline to the garden. I took this picture from our deck on the backside of the house.      

The front bed contains the bush beans. This block planted bed is really filling out and will probably be ready for the first harvests around the first part of July. The middle bed is the squash and zucchini and the bed at the back is the tomato patch. You can see three of the four open spots where I had to remove the infected Celebrity plants (bacterial canker). The good news is ... that the basil I planted in those open spots have already emerged! At the very back of this garden area (not really visible in this picture) is the vertical grow bed.                                             

Here's a closer look at the bush green beans.                       

The new vertical grow bed has "Mokum" carrots planted the entire length in the front portion of the bed. Growing up the trellis support structures are pole beans (in the following picture) plus more cucumbers and runner beans (not in the picture).                                              

The corn patch is getting pretty tall.                                        

Corn is one crop that really needs warm and sunny days to get a move on. I gave these plants a fertilizing drench of fish emulsion today. With corn, I tend to feed it more often with the higher nitrogen fish emulsion fertilizer than I do any other garden crop. It's a heavy feeder and needs the nitrogen to thrive.                        

After being somewhat stalled out for a time (due to cool/damp spring conditions), the cucumber transplants are finally getting some decent growth on them since we have now had several weeks of warm and sunshiny weather.        

The potato beds have had all the trenches filled in now and are working on getting their top growth established and fully leafed out.                   

There are flower buds formed on all four varieties of potatoes. This tells me I am about due for the mid season side dressing of organic fertilizer for them. It also means that the new potatoes will likely soon be ready for light harvesting.                  

Finally, the storage onions are doing really well this year.                   

The stems have thickened up, the bulbs are starting to fatten, and the tops are getting lush. I gave these plants a fish emulsion drench today too. It's very important for the onions to develop lots of green top growth during June and early July before they yield to the day length changes and begin the vegetation die back process and final bulb development. The more lush the top growth the more sugars and energy is available to be stored in the onion bulb at that final phase of the plant's maturation.             

It's been nice to be home for a few days, especially since the weather was so stunningly beautiful. The remainder of the week will likely be fast paced and mentally consuming due to my mid week return to work, but the garden is in good order and I know that it will continue to develop and grow - providing more and more harvests in the weeks to come.