The Modern Victory Garden

This morning started out cloudy and cooler but by noon the sun had burned through and the late afternoon temperatures once again climbed back up to the mid 70's.   The forecast for the week ahead looks equally promising.   This is good news indeed for the garden -  as it provides the warmth needed to move some of the summer crops into greater production.   Many items are flourishing but had slowed down a bit with a return of cooler weather.   A warm up will push them back into faster growth mode.                  

It's probably about time to share some garden overview pictures with you again to show how things have been progressing.            

Here's the back garden area as viewed from our deck.                    

The front bed is the bush beans (and there are carrots just out of the picture to the left).   The green beans are getting good foliage development and will likely start flowering soon.   Behind them are the pumpkins, winter squash, and zucchini.   I posted about all of those yesterday.   At the far back is the tomato patch and the vertical grow bed.   The tomatoes are doing really well and have lots of flowers and fruits forming.   Here's a closer look at the bed and one of the larger "Legend" tomatoes that is growing.                

There are quite a few tomatoes formed and growing including this and other "Legends", plus quite a few "Siletz" and clusters of "Stupice" tomatoes.   I have not been able to find any sauce tomatoes ("Viva Italia") or "Celebrity" tomatoes yet but both varieties are flowering profusely so they must be coming along soon.                                          

The bed of bush beans is quite robust.   I must admit that picking green beans is not my favorite chore and unfortunately this bed looks like it is going to  be quite a time consumer to get harvested properly.   I may need to recruit my daughter's help to stay on top of it this year.                  

The side garden area is also growing nicely. This is that area as (again) viewed from our deck.

The first bed is the larger of the two beds of potatoes. Here's another look at it from a different angle.                                     

This bed has "Caribe",  "Yukon Gold", and "Red Cloud" potatoes.   I want to show you the "Red Cloud" blooms.   They are a darker purple than the others and are quite pretty.                                      

In a separate and smaller bed are the "Butte" potatoes.              

Also in the side garden area is the brussel sprout plants.                

 They are growing taller now and I took the time today to loosely secure the plants to the support stakes using large tie wraps.                          

This helps them to remain upright as they grow taller and more top heavy. 

I ended up spending quite a bit of time out in the garden today. One of the primary things I got accomplished was to remove all the overwintered spinach plants and amend that bed with compost.   As you may recall, I was letting those plants go to seed for the purposes of saving seed.    I have been watching them grow larger and larger - until they began laying over into the adjacent beds of onions and brussel sprouts.   It had gotten to the point where they were causing problems for the other crops and yet were still quite a ways away from having mature seed formation.   So I decided to abandon the idea of saving spinach seed and went ahead and pulled them all up and composted them.   It made a tremendous difference for the onions and brussel sprouts to get those out of there.   I put a heavy layer of compost on the bed plus some organic general-purpose fertilizer and then used the broadfork to aerate that section.   I will probably put some of the fall/winter cabbages into this bed when the plants are ready to be set out.             

Here's what I got done today:

• Pulled spinach plants and amended the bed
• Watered all the containers, strawberries, onions, garlic, cole crops, peas, and the entire vertical grow bed
• Trimmed the lowest most leaves off of the brussel sprouts to keep slugs off
• Secured the brussel sprouts to their stakes
• Added an extra cage to the "Stupice" tomatoes as they need greater support
• Sprayed the cole crops (broccoli, brussel sprouts, and cabbages) with Bt solution
• Thinned the beet patch and got a ½ pound of young beets for the effort
• Harvested parsley, basil, green onions, strawberries, radishes, and romaine lettuce

The beets will be kept in the fridge to be sautéed in olive oil and butter later this week for one of our evening meals. The strawberries were eaten almost as fast I picked them!   The parsley, basil, and green onions were used in combination with 2 pints of pressure canned navy beans to make Italian Bean Salad for dinner tonight.   In addition, I used the heads of romaine lettuce to make a large green salad with sliced radishes added for color.   I have some homemade ranch dressing in the fridge that I will serve with the green salad.   The two salads will accompany grilled marinated skirt steak - sliced thinly across the grain before serving.                       

The garden should grow well this week with the forecasted sunshine and warmth.   Looking forward to harvesting a mess of potatoes next weekend to make a large potato salad for the Fourth.