The Modern Victory Garden

The weather gave us a bit of a break the past two days.   It has been overcast and cool but no rain, and it has been warm enough for the past few days that the soil is now unfrozen.   I took advantage of the respite and got outside today to take care of a few things in the garden.   The primary objective was to clean up one of two beds of carrots that have been plundered by our marauding rabbit.   I only tackled one this weekend because it is too cool to spend more than few hours outside at a time.   If the weather cooperates, I will similarly clean up the other bed next weekend.     

The bed I worked on was the newest of the vertical grow beds.   It had Mokum carrots growing in the front 1 foot of bed area – down the entire length of the bed.   This variety of carrot is particularly nice for fresh eating and we have been using them from mid summer up until just recently for that purpose.   As a consequence, there really were not too many carrots left in the bed by the time the rabbit found his way to it.   What was there though, he has been damaging with abandon.   I used two large 5 gallon buckets for the job.   One was for the damaged carrots and debris, which were destined for the compost heap.   The other was for carrots that looked to be in good condition as I pulled them from the soil.   A garden fork was used to then work my way up the bed, loosening the soil and then removing the carrots.                                                                             

For every 1 carrot that looked good – 2 (or more) were damaged.   The bucket on the left is the “looks okay” stash, and the bucket on the right is the clearly damaged group.                                          

The carrots were washed by swirling some water in the bucket until the bulk of the dirt was removed.   The muddy water was poured into the compost pile and then a further cull was made pulling out carrots that had insect or rot damage that was not readily apparent when covered with soil.   When all was said and done, I ended up with just over one and half pounds of good carrots salvaged from the bed.   Probably had about four pounds of carrot debris that went into the compost pile.                                  

I raked the bed smooth after the carrot removal process and then dumped 3 full buckets of really good finished compost across the surface.                

I then smoothed the compost out over the surface so that it provided about a ½ to 1-inch layer over the entire bed.                       

This bed is now empty and amended.   I also did a little weeding in a few other beds and put away some hoops that had been left in place but were not being used.   I have several other beds that are now empty and also need compost added to them.   Over the course of the next several weeks, I hope to get to each of these and get them taken care of too.   It was nice to spend a few hours outside today.   However, I was ready to come in and warm up by the time I wrapped up for the afternoon.   There may have been a break in the weather today, but it IS still winter out there!