The Modern Victory Garden

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Transitions

Posted on September 13, 2009 at 11:30 PM

The garden is definitely transitioning towards fall.   There is still an abundance of traditional summer crops to harvest, but they are starting to wind down and the fall crops are really coming into their own.   Some of the items I am happy to see return after a summer hiatus are lettuce and spinach.                                                

                                            

      

     

This is the bed I planted several weeks ago of lettuce and spinach and they are just about ready for the first light harvests.                      

        

Nothing was done in the garden this weekend, as I was away on a trip to Spokane to see my parents.   On the drive home today, I stopped at the large produce barn in Thorp Washington and purchased a big box each of pears and peaches.   The pears are quite green yet, and will hold for several days while they continue to ripen.   The peaches however, will need to be processed either tomorrow or Tuesday evening as they are beautifully ripe and will not hold for very long.                

                                 

After I got home tonight, I checked on the garden and found everything in good order - but I definitely need to water the recently seeded bed of spinach (the over wintering patch), as it has germinated but the soil is drying out.                                

 

The sugar snap peas (Cascadia) that I am letting set seed are getting closer to being ready to harvest for seed.   The pods are swollen with plump seed peas and the vines are beginning to die back.                               

    

   

 

The pumpkin seeds I saved last weekend are getting well dried but I will continue to let them dry in the open air for another week before I package them up for storage.   The other seed saving items are the bush beans (Jade) and the runner beans (Sunset).   Both of these are making good progress but they are not as far along in development as the sugar snap peas.   Since I am planning to grow a different variety of pole beans next year, I am not going to save any seed from this year's crop.   

  

Glad to be home after being away for a few days and expect I will be busy in the coming days catching up on garden tasks and canning those purchased pears and peaches.

Categories: Seed Saving, Fall/Winter Gardening, Vegetables

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9 Comments

Reply Judy
05:44 AM on September 14, 2009 
Your baby lettuce and spinach are looking great! It's time for me to also put some seeds into the ground for a fall garden. I'm so ready for some green, leafy veggies! I've missed them though the hot summer.
Reply Daphne
08:17 AM on September 14, 2009 
I wish I had seeded my spinach a few weeks ago. Mine are just barely getting their first true leaves right now. I think i'm still weeks from eating it.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
08:33 AM on September 14, 2009 
Judy - I will definitely miss the summer garden, but the return of sweet lettuce and abundant spinach is most welcome.

Daphne - Luckily spinach is fast growing so hopefully you will be harvesting it within a reasonably short period of time.
Reply hsheather
09:29 AM on September 15, 2009 
I need to go plant some more lettuce and spinach. Those look wonderful.
Reply Dan
02:14 PM on September 15, 2009 
Your greens bed looks excellent! I to have a lot of catch up to do in the garden. So many things need thinning and I need to plant all the fall crops that are growing in cell packs. I also need to take out the rest of the tomato plants. My list keeps getting longer!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
01:00 AM on September 16, 2009 
hsheather - I thought I was sick of greens after the long spring diet of them, but their return this fall has been very welcome.

Dan - I need some time in the garden too. There is alot of fall clean up and plant maintenance that is needed.
Reply Sustainable Eats
03:04 AM on September 17, 2009 
I planted spinach a few weeks back and none of it germinated. Now I'm wondering if I put the row marker in and forgot the seeds - I wouldn't put it past me! The other thing I had horrible germination from is the nantaise carrots. The red dragon is going gangbusters and almost ready to eat but they don't taste that great. Do you pre-soak your carrots seeds? I'm wondering why the nantaise are the only ones to not germinate well.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
09:13 AM on September 17, 2009 
Sustainable Eats - I do not soak seeds before planting. I had very good germination from the Nantaise carrots so I am suspicioning it was not the variety that is the issue but perhaps the conditions they encountered after you planted them or maybe older seed? If you use pelleted carrot seed, the germination rate goes to almost zero in less than a year's time because of the clay that coats the seed. They are handy for planting easily but must be used immediately in the spring. Poor germination can occur for a variety of reason (particularly with carrots that are slow to germinate and produce relatively weak seedlings) - including: Allowing the seed bed to dry out, birds or other critters eating the seed, burying the seed too deeply, soil that has a hard crust on the surface such that the seed cannot push through well, and damping off disease. Also, sometimes you get germination but then something kills it immediately (critter eating or disease).
Reply Sustainable Eats
11:42 AM on September 17, 2009 
It must have just been a bad batch then. They were newly ordered from Territorial Seed and put in intensive rows in the same bed as 3 other types of carrots, one of which I am almost ready to eat they have done so well and they were both supposed to be ready within days of each other. I think I'll just throw the rest of that envelope away and not waste my time on it this spring!