The Modern Victory Garden

Harvest Monday Recap                    

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!                            

I am sure all of you are probably just about sick-to-death tired of seeing my minmal and rather repetitive mid winter harvests.   The selection of items available for harvesting is limited to parsnips, carrots, kale, corn salad, and some swiss chard at the moment.  The greens are at the point in the growing season where they are all but stopped in growth - due to the lack of day length and sun strength.   As a result, I have to be extremely restrained in my harvesting of them to avoid depleting them too early in the season.   The greens availability will pick up in late January after we pass the shortest day of the year (December 21st) and start back towards increasing sun strength.   In preparation for that I have greens growing in the unheated greenhouse in containers, over wintering young spinach growing under the protection of a grow tunnel, and in the shop I have various items growing under lights that will be ready for planting in containers in the greenhouse soon.   The seedlings are coming along well.   On Saturday, I brought them outside for a short while to give them a good bottom watering and to let them enjoy some feeble winter sunshine.         

Growing in these flats are two different lettuce blends, day neutral onions, pac choi, bok choy, kale, spinach, and two kinds of cabbages.                

On Sunday I harvested some more parsnips to keep on hand in the fridge for meal preparation during the coming workweek.   It is pitch dark by the time I get home from work each evening and digging root crops in the dark is not my favorite chore on a rainy and cold winter night.   We are in large part using frozen, home canned, and storage produce for meals at the moment, but I like to supplement it with some fresh harvest items as well.                    

Harvest totals for the week of November 29th through December 5th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).        

• Parsnips 1.75 lbs

Total For Week 1.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 444.50 lbs           

Eggs harvested this week - 34                           

Winter Garden Tasks                    

It is definitely wintertime.   Everything is wet and cold and the temperatures are quite chilly.   Garden tasks are minimal but it is a great time to attend to bed maintenance or repairs so that everything is ready to go in early spring.   Last weekend, I began the process of removing the two strawberry beds by tackling the smaller of the two.   Today (Sunday) I removed the second (larger) bed.   Here’s the bed before and after I did the plant removal process.             

Behind this bed is the parsnip patch that I am currently harvesting from.   This bed plus the parsnip patch bed will be used next spring to move my blueberry bushes into with an under story planting of some additional low growing cranberry plants.   The blueberries are currently growing in large pots on the deck but are outgrowing the containers and need to move into a more permanent location.   The new strawberry patch will go in the bed located next to these two.   Late last summer I rooted out a bunch of strawberry runners, which are happily growing in large containers.   They will be used to plant up the new strawberry patch in mid March.                      

One other bed maintenance / repair project I attended to this weekend was the perennial bed at the very back of the garden.  This bed has the bush pie cherries and the rhubarb plants in it.   It is on a sloping piece of ground and was not properly terraced when I built it, such that the framed edging developed gaps underneath the lower side as soil sloughed off downhill.   The result was that the bed was emptying out of soil.   On Saturday, I inserted scrap timbers to hold in the soil. I then recycled soil mix from several large containers into the bed and smoothed it out to fill in the significant holes that had been created.   I finished up by pruning the bush pie cherries and then covering the entire bed with hoops and netting to keep the chickens out.      

You can see the low side that was previously bleeding out soil on the left.   If you look closely you can also see the timbers I inserted which now holds the soil in properly. 

Making good progress on my winter task list.   Soon I will be getting started with this year’s shop project.   Last year I built my planting jigs.   The year before I built my horizontal pea trellis.   My plan for this year is to improve on the horizontal pea trellis – creating the second generation of this very useful garden structure.   I have ideas rattling around in my head and need to finalize the design ideas soon so that I can get the required materials and get it built during the dark and boring days of January.                      

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener