The Modern Victory Garden

It's been a productive Sunday so far.    I have been working my way through several tasks, but at a slow enough pace that there has been time to savor the truly gorgeous summer day at hand.   Yesterday evening, my daughter and I picked the entire bush bean patch for a second time getting over 6 lbs of produce for our efforts.  This morning after breakfast I set to work to prep and process them for freezing.   While working on freezing the green beans, I also baked a loaf of no knead bread.   By noon, I was wrapped up with the kitchen tasks and was able to move outside for some garden time.           

The garden in early August is a bit of a jungle.   It's hard to do the weed whacking of walkways because the potatoes are starting to lay down and the squash plants are taking over all parts of the garden.   I hope you will overlook the overgrown walkways in the following pictures.       

 Here's a view of the side garden as seen from our deck.                  

The first bed has the early and mid season potatoes which are beginning to lie down.   In a few weeks they will begin really dieing back and by early September will be ready for digging and storage.   The next bed over has two different crops of carrots, parsnips, recently planted kale, and the brussel sprouts. 

Looking at this same area but from the backmost portion of the garden.   

I mentioned before that I have had to give in to using sprinklers for watering chores because the heat has made it impossible to keep up with the watering duties otherwise.   I like this particular sprinkler because it uses a low amount of water, sits up high so it can be used in beds with tall crops, and creates a gentle rain effect that seems to be most effective for soaking the beds.   The plants in the front portion of the center bed are Steins Late Flat cabbages and behind them are the Butte potatoes.  To the right are the fall plantings of broccoli and cabbages, and to the left is the corn patch.               

Also in this portion of the garden is the longest of the vertical grow beds.   It has cucumbers (both slicers and picklers), runner beans, and sugar snap peas growing on the vertical support structures.  The Sunset runner beans are flowering and are creating a nice wall of blooms and foliage.       

The cucumbers are next to them on the left. There are lots of tiny cucumbers on the plants, but so far there is only one slicing cucumber that appears to have been pollinated and is suddenly putting on some decent size.       

Moving around to the back of the house (and the other side of the greenhouse) is the newest section of the garden.                    

This is truly a productive jungle in this back area!   The front bed is the bush bean patch which is producing abundantly at the moment.   In the middle is the squash patch with winter squash, pumpkins, and zucchini.  The pumpkins and winter squash plants have sent their vines into each others areas and consequently the patch is now a mixture with Small Sugar pumpkins growing right along side the Buttercup squash.                      

My cat Sid found a cool retreat in the shade of the tomato patch.   He was hamming it up for the camera!                   

One of the chores I attended to today was the planting up of the swiss chard and kale seedlings.   They were started on the fourth of July but could not wait any longer to be transplanted - as they were getting root bound already.   The swiss chard was planted in containers on the deck that will later this fall go into the greenhouse to over winter.         

I used my new (old) compost sifter for the first time today and sifted up some nice compost to add to the containers to rejuvenate the potting soil in them.                      

Here are the swiss chard plants after being potted up in one of the three containers.                               

The other task I attended to was the pulling of the storage onions.   They have been laid over for a while now and were ready for the harvest.   I laid them out on the sidewalk area next to the shop.   This area is fairly shady so they will be warm and dry but not baked by the hot sun while they dry and cure.                                 

There are 62 bulbs in this pile.   I have half as many sweet onions still in the ground that we will use up first before moving to these better keeping onions.   These were not quite as productive as I would have liked, but it is a decent harvest none the less.                      

The rest of the day will be largely devoted to continuing the watering process.   Plan to harvest some basil and green beans in a little while.   Tonight's dinner menu will be pasta tossed with fresh made pesto (basil, garlic, pine nuts, seasonings, and olive oil), slices of zucchini dredged in fine seasoned bread crumbs and fried up crisp, steamed green beans with a little butter and salt, and roasted chicken thighs.                    

I think I will sit outside for awhile first though, and enjoy the fine summer day with my cat Sid.