The Modern Victory Garden

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.  It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in so many different regions.   Check it out and join in!    

The harvest this week was composed in large part from the tomatoes ripening off the vine that finished ripening and were then pulled out of the boxes to be weighed and used.   The cucumbers and zucchinis continue to produce despite the cool, overcast, and damp weather.   On Sunday, I got a good start on the fall garden bed clean up.   One bed had a small patch of carrots that were largely overrun by the adjacent patch of dill.   I went ahead and just harvested all of them as part of the garden tidy up work.  Did not manage to get pictures of everything that was harvested, but here is some of it.         

Harvest totals for the week of September 27th through October 3rd (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Carrots 1.75 lbs
• Cucumbers 1.25 lbs
• Herbs (Dill) 0.25 lbs
• Parsnips 0.50 lbs
• Tomatoes 18.50 lbs
• Zucchini 3.50 lbs

Total For Week 25.25 lbs

Total Year To Date 395.00 lbs    

Eggs harvested this week - 39                 

Saturday was spent doing the annual woodstove and chimney pipe sweeping along with clearing out all of the dieing tomato plants from the outside garden beds.   On Sunday morning, after the hens had finished laying their morning batch of eggs, they got busy and did a sweep for bugs in the emptied tomato beds.                  

Our usual fall overcast/rainy weather has pretty much settled in now.   We certainly get bright sunshine filled days now and then but they are not frequent and the general dampness is posing some problems in wrapping up the drying process on the dried beans.   I had previously pulled the plants and had them laid out in the shop drying down, but there was too much dampness and I was losing pods to fungus and molds.   I stripped the remaining good pods from the plants and laid them out on a window screen elevated up from the shop floor to increase air circulation.              

Did a seeding of a crimson clover green manure/cover crop in the big bed that previously held the potato patch.   Covered it with hoops and netting to protect it from the chickens who have free range of the garden and back yard area during the daytime.               

I also cleaned out a 4’x12’ garden bed and layered a full wheel barrow load of finished compost on it.   This will be the 2011 allium bed and I was planning to plant the garlic bulbs on Sunday in it but it began to rain and I decided to just wait until next weekend.            

The garden currently has spinach, kale, broccoli, parsnips, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, swiss chard, runner beans, celery, raspberries, and pumpkins growing in it and ready for harvest.   The broccoli in particular will need to start being harvested in the next week, as the heads are getting quite big.    More fall clean up and bed prep to do in the coming weeks, but I got a good start on it this weekend.

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener