The Modern Victory Garden

The strength and length of available sun is obviously ramping up significantly.   In addition, the arc of the sun in the sky has moved higher such that the sun is now starting to clear the tall trees that surround our property occassionally.     The greenhouse and back garden beds in particular are showing real appreciation for the infusion of solar energy.   The greenhouse plantings and trays of seedlings have just taken off this week.   In fact, I need to harvest the kale plantings soon and the onion seedlings really should be planted out into the garden this coming weekend.   A sure sign that spring has really arrived - is the rhubarb is up in force. 

I found the first spear of asparagus poking through the soil this past weekend too!    It’s small and does not show up well in a photo, but like the rhubarb it makes me happy as they are the first substantial crops of the early spring garden.      

The replacement raspberry plants were supposed to arrive on Friday but did not.   With my husband’s help we forged ahead despite that to largely finish up the raspberry patch rejuvenation project on Saturday.   The big thing still on the to do list (besides planting the replacement plants) was to construct the supports for the raspberry beds.   Together we got them constructed and installed in no time at all.    

Today, the raspberry plants finally arrived and I made a point to leave work on time so I could get home before dark and plant them up.   No pictures to share because it was getting dark by the time I finished, but they are all in.   Now the only task I have left to do on this spring project is to reinstall the drip irrigation hose down the bed of raspberries.   Hopefully these newest bare root plants will all break dormancy and help fill in the missing portions of the raspberry bed.         

It’s a good thing the early spring crops are taking hold and starting to produce.   The inventory of freezer items from the garden is getting down to a low level because we have been leaning on them so hard for months now.   The canned items are less depleted overall but certain items (like dilly green beans) have long been used up.   The pickled peppers on the other hand have been hardly touched.   They taste great but honestly, we prefer diced frozen (roasted and raw) peppers and I am having a hard time finding ways to work them into our menus.   If you have any great ideas to share on this – I would love to hear them.   The late fall/winter crops are essentially done for the year with the exception that I still have some over wintered carrots to harvest, and there are parsnips still in the ground too - but they are going to seed and need to just be pulled.   I think the preserved supply level was just about right this year and we have not been wanting for much of anything as a result.   The only storage/preserved crop that is running out far too soon this year are the onions.   2009 was a rather bad production year for onions for some reason.   We used up the storage onions a while ago and have been using my freezer supply of diced onions but they too are fast running out and the green onions in the garden and greenhouse are still too small yet to harvest.   We may have to actually reduce down (possibly even stop) the onion usage for cooking for a while.   Now that is a true hardship because I use onions in just about everything I cook it seems.   Hopefully the green onions will get a kick-start from the increasing sun energy and I will not have to endure the onion drought for too long.   To avoid having this problem in 2010, I am planting significantly more onions and hedging my bets by planting not only onions started from seeds, but also sets, and my usual multiplier onion patch as well.   Keep your fingers crossed for me that 2010 is a better onion year altogether.            

Got any good ideas on how to incorporate pickled peppers into our evening meals?