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!                                

Even though the fresh harvests are fairly light right now, the garden’s produce continues to feature heavily in our daily dinner menus.   This week we used frozen young snapped runner beans, frozen broccoli florets, frozen diced peppers, frozen garden peas, storage potatoes (lots of them!), garlic, onions, and fresh harvested lettuces and kale.                                 

I generally keep track of the harvests and our evening meal menus on The Calendar along with other items of note happening in the garden.   I don’t try to keep track of everything we cook and eat, just the dinner prep.   The point of it is to chronicle how the garden fuels us during all seasons – even winter.   The garden certainly does not feed us entirely as we are true omnivores, but it does provide for our vegetable needs virtually 100%.   The occasional meal eaten out keeps us from being entirely 100% but we are close.  We must purchase (locally where possible) meat, dairy, a good portion of our fruits, grains, a large portion of dried beans, but the garden provides the vegetables and a sizeable amount of fruit and of course our hens provide us with all the eggs we could ever want!                   

Harvest totals for the week of December 20th through December 26th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).          

• Lettuce & Greens 0.25 lbs

Total For Week 0.25 lbs

Total Year To Date 446.75 lbs                        

Eggs harvested this week - 38                                

Greenhouse Crops                                         

The greens growing in large containers in the greenhouse are healthy but largely stopped in growth for the time being due to the low sun strength and short day length.    Now that we have hit the bottom of the solar cycle (December 21st) and starting the long slow crawl back to greater sun availability, I can look forward to the plants starting to respond by a resumption of growth.    They are poised to do so as they have good root systems developed.    Growing in pots are some corn salad (mache), swiss chard, and some young chinese cabbages.                             

In addition, Sunday afternoon I transplanted into two other large containers in the greenhouse some kale, cabbages, bok choy, and pac choi plants that have been growing in the shop under lights.   In the coming weeks they can settle in and establish good root systems and similarly then spring forward with new growth once the day length and sun strength starts markedly increasing.   In a short while, I will start some more greens in the shop to come along right behind these.  

We had a lovely Christmas but it was very quiet for us. This is the first year for us without our daughter at home and it was a strange sensation to celebrate the holidays without her.   Her absence was felt more keenly the last few days as a result.   The good news is that she will be arriving home soon for a visit (barring flight cancellations due to the crummy weather back east).   I can hardly wait!   Happy Holidays to all of you and I wish for all of us a new year of good health, laughter, and bountiful gardens!                        

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener