The Modern Victory Garden

Saturday morning was spent running errands and shopping, but I was back home and everything was put away by noon and I was able to get a lot accomplished with the rest of the day despite the later start on it.   The main thing I wanted to get accomplished in the garden was to pick the bush beans and, at the same time, remove the spent plants and compost them.   My husband had the chickens out for their daily grazing/foraging and he was working on trimming back some of the brambles that were encroaching on the garden while he kept a watchful eye on the birds.   As a result I had his company in the garden – along with six little feathered helpers. 

This is one of the two bush bean patches and you can see in this photo that I had already begun harvesting and removing the bean plants.   The chickens quickly figured out that when I pulled up the plants, that I not only disturbed the soil yielding worms and various bugs, but that I shook bugs off of the plants too!   They had a feast of worms, spiders, tiny caterpillars, a beetle or two, an occasional cutworm, and even some tiny slugs although they will not eat the really big slugs (and who can blame them?!).

I piled up the bean plants that I pulled and then carted them off to the compost pile.   With all the bean plants I added Saturday, I finished completely filling a bin and need to start a new bin for collecting garden, kitchen, chicken coop, and yard waste. 

In the process of foraging, the chickens did a mini cultivation of the soil such that it is largely ready for a layer of compost to be added at this point.   Here’s the bed after I was through with clearing it out.   The front portion of the bed has dill and some carrots growing in it.   The bed directly behind this one is the parsnip patch.   I have resisted the temptation to pull one to see how they are coming along, but based on the top growth, I believe these will be a good sized this year. 

The second bush bean patch was planted in the front portion of one of the vertical grow beds, in front of the pole beans.   Here’s what the bed looked like before I similarly picked and stripped it out. 

Here is what it looked like after I had finished the harvest and clearing out project.   Notice my helpers followed me to this area of the garden as well!      

The bush beans were much better at coping with our cool summer than our pole beans have been.   I will continue to get bean harvests from the pole bean plants, but they are not producing heavily and it will only be enough for fresh eating needs through the early fall.   I have been quite happy with the Royal Burgundy purple podded bush beans and will definitely be growing these again. 

In addition to the bush beans I harvested, I also cut some celery, some rhubarb stalks, some dill heads, and dug up some potatoes Saturday.   By the time I headed into the house late in the afternoon, I had a full harvest basket of items – all of which ended up being used before the day was out.  

The celery was cleaned, trimmed, sliced, and then placed on a cookie sheet in the freezer.   They will be added to the freezer bag of celery slices that I have going after they are solidly frozen.   The potatoes, a few of the green beans, and the rhubarb were used to make the evening meal for the day.   The potatoes were peeled and sliced thinly and then used to make Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes.    The rhubarb was cleaned, sliced into 1 inch pieces, and (because it yielded three cups of finished pieces and I needed four cups) I combined it with 1 cup of frozen blueberries and made a rhubarb/blueberry pie.  

The dinner menu was baked spiral cut ham, scalloped potatoes, steamed green beans (with just a little butter and salt) and rhubarb/blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream for dessert.  

After dinner, I prepared the remaining green beans by trimming the ends and rinsing them and then processed a batch of dilly green beans   Here's the recipe: 

Dilly Green Beans

Yields about 4 to 6 pints

• 2 pounds green beans
• ¼ cup canning salt
• 2 ½ cups vinegar
• 2 ½ cups water
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, divided
• 4 cloves garlic
• 4 heads dill

Trim ends off green beans. Combine salt, vinegar and water in a large cooking pot. Bring to a boil. Pack beans lengthwise into hot jars, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Add ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 peeled clove of garlic, and 1 head of dill to each pint jar. Ladle hot liquid over beans, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath canner.

I wrapped up about 8 pm last night and enjoyed a slice of that pie and watched an old sci fi movie.   Here are the finished dilly green beans this morning after they were cooled and I had removed the rings from them.   The purple-podded green beans colored the pickling brine with a bit of a purple color, which I think is attractive.

Today (Sunday) we are planning to spend the day at the Bloedel Reserve gardens on Bainbridge Island.   Monday is a holiday, so I am hoping to spend another productive day in the garden and do a little more preserving too.   I really love three day weekends!   It gives lots of time to do homestead chores and projects, plus provides an extra day to just play.

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener