The Modern Victory Garden

It was a cool and overcast day today and it felt more like November than October.   The chill put the move on my husband and I to get the annual stovepipe sweeping completed so we are ready for another season of heating with our woodstove.   We have the necessary chimney sweep brushes and are getting fairly good at this annual task.   The only glitch we seem to run into each year is reassembling the stovepipe inside the house, which has to be removed to clean (has an elbow).   It did not help that I had accidentally vacuumed up the screws with the shop vac while cleaning up the debris knocked out of the stovepipe by the brush!   The screws are actually quite small and were difficult to find in the powdery soot inside the shop vac container.   Eventually we found them and got the pipe reinstalled.   Good to go for yet another year.                                                      

Once that was completed, I shifted my attention to the garden, which was in need of some fall clean up.   Here is a picture of the older portion of the garden.       

The center beds have the vast majority of our winter crops growing in them - carrots, parsnips, winter cabbages, brussel sprouts, loose-leaf cabbage, broccoli, and kale.   This afternoon, I removed even more of the lower leaves on the brussel sprouts to encourage the sprouts to continue sizing up.   I also harvested the Cascadia sugar snap pea seeds and pulled down those dried vines you see in the back right portion of the picture.   The Sunset runner beans were also harvested and the seeds were removed to dry along with the sugar snap peas.   I removed he runner bean vines and the cucumber vines and composted them along with the pea vine.   I also pulled up all of the bush bean plants and laid out a large number of them to finish drying down for seed saving.  The rest of the bush bean plants were composted as well.   By the end of the work session, I had topped off two of the compost bins.   I now have just one empty bin available for the rest of the fall leaves, kitchen scraps, and all other late season garden debris.                    

I wrapped up the garden chores by watering the peppers in the greenhouse thoroughly - using rain barrel water.   Because the temperature is supposed to get quite chilly tonight, I closed up the greenhouse early so that the passive solar would have a chance to warm up the interior before the sun went down.   I still have quite a bit of pepper production happening and I would like to keep them going as long as I can.   The last thing accomplished was to harvest a head of Ruby Ball cabbage, some ripe mini bell peppers, and a mess of good-sized carrots.         

The carrots and peppers will be used for snacking and cooking over the next several days.   The cabbage was combined with a small onion to make coleslaw for tonight's dinner.   The evening meal menu was crispy roasted chicken thighs, mashed potatoes and gravy, and purple cabbage coleslaw.   I brought in some Yukon Gold potatoes from storage to make the mash potatoes.   While I was in the storage area, I pulled out the very last of the Viva Italia tomatoes that I have been ripening off the vine.                            

The tomato plants were pulled at the end of August due to blight infection.   I set many of the tomatoes aside to ripen off the vine and they have been providing us with a steady supply since that time. These are the very last ones.                

It was a productive day and I am glad to get the annual stovepipe-cleaning chore completed.   The only other major winterizing chore yet left to do - is the cleaning out of the gutters.   Probably get a start on that this weekend as well, but it is a task that has to be broken up over time - as it is just too much to do all at once.             

Is your garden and home ready for the coming colder days?