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 garden is now into a light harvest mode that supplements the preserved summer produce in the weekly menus.   This week, I harvested some lettuce and young swiss chard leaves, some parsnips, and some kale.   I did not get pictures of everything but here is the majority of it.                    

Harvest totals for the week of November 8th through November 14th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).     

• Kale 0.25 lbs
• Lettuce 0.25 lbs
• Parsnips 1.25 lbs

Total For Week 1.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 440.50 lbs                   

Eggs harvested this week - 35                       

On Sunday, we tackled the first pass of raking up the leaves from our Japanese Red Maples.   Two of the trees are pretty much done with their leaf drop, but one of the trees still has quite a bit of leaves to let go of yet.   In about two weeks, I will have to go back with a second effort to get the rest of the leaves from this last tree.   It is mid November and the rainy season that the maritime Pacific Northwest is famous for is well underway.   The leaves were quite wet as a result, but the long term forecast showed no relief thus putting off the task made no sense.   So here is the area before…         

…and after the raking was completed.                               

The leaves were gathered up in the wheelbarrow and then carted off to the compost bins.                   

There is one bin that is almost finished, a second bin that was partially full that I finished off with leaves, and another bin that is almost entirely filled with just leaves.   The third bin will continue to receive kitchen debris and garden trimmings, along with chicken yard and coop cleanings until it is fully topped off.   I will need to set up a fourth bin soon as these will be nicely filled and “cooking” in short order.  

The leaves on the trees and deciduous bushes are not the only plants to be changing colors.   I noticed the ferns growing in the under story of the forest surrounding our home have turned a beautiful golden color too.

In addition to the color provided by the leaves and ferns, our yard has a surprising colorful addition this fall, in that several of our red rhododendrons are confused and are blooming!                                     

I have never seen these plants give a second bloom in late fall like this so I did some research on it and found that while not common, it does happen once in a while.   To put it simply these plants are not so much re blooming as they are getting a jump on the spring blooms.   Spring-blooming woody plants (such as rhodies) initiate flower buds on previous year's wood. The flower buds require a period of chilling before they will break dormancy and bloom.   Normally, this happens during the winter months.   However, anyone who has been following my blog for the past several months knows that we have had an extremely cool and wet summer followed by a damp and cold fall.   Apparently, the relentlessly cool nights we have been experiencing provided enough chilling to result in these plants blooming out of their "normal" sequence.   Sadly, this likely means these particular plants will not bloom next spring as a result.   This extra shot of fall color and display emphasizes what a strange and rather non-existent summer we had in 2010.   Here’s hoping that next year is a little more normal!                      

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener