The Modern Victory Garden

It’s the middle of the workweek and early in January.   This translates into “it’s dark as a mud pie when I finally roll in at night and the garden is covered by a pile of wet slushy snow at the moment”.   There is a lot going on in my gardening life right now though despite the darkness and cold wet stuff.           

First up, the seed orders have largely all arrived.   I have a few odds and ends still in transit but the bulk of my seeds are on hand at this point.            

Included in this treasure trove of seeds are a couple of small packets of Red Shiso, Yard Long Beans, and Garland Chysanthemums aka Korean Ssuk Gat (edible chrysanthemums) that were very generously sent to me by one of my blog followers (Julie) who as it turns out lives very close by in a neighboring community.  The Red Shiso was featured by Mr. H at Subsistence Pattern (one of my favorite blogs).   Ssuk Gat is an item I must confess I know very little about, but I look forward to learning more about it.   While I am glad to have the seed inventory on hand, I am particularly happy to have the onion seeds arrive earlier this week.   I need to start them this weekend and was getting worried about whether they would be here in time.                    

To make way for the fresh seed stock, I offered up the surplus items I had from last year that I did not need and within just a day or so of posting the offer – they were all taken!   Sharing seeds with one another is a great way to try different varieties.   The last packages were mailed out today and I hope they all make it safely to their destinations.                          

Last Saturday the temperatures were well above freezing and it wasn’t raining or snowing for a change.   I took advantage of that fact and cleaned the greenhouse panels inside and out because they were quite dirty and had a thin film of green slime forming on them.   It took several hours to do the job properly but the improvement in how much feeble winter sun was able to reach the plants inside was ample reward for the effort.   This is a chore that needs to be done at least once every year and it is nice to have it done so early in the year.                            

Have a shop project this winter to create the second generation of my horizontal pea trellis.   I need some specific PVC fittings to complete my design, but as soon as I get them purchased I think this will come together very quickly.   I am excited about the upgrade because I love how the horizontal trellis has performed for me the past two years but have identified a couple of things that could be improved upon.     Here’s the old design in use:         

Stay tuned.   I will have a blog post about the new design soon.                

That’s about it for things going on this week (so far!).   I will close by sharing with you that I received an email this week letting me know that an article was published on the Masters of Public Health of the Top 50 Urban Farming Blogs and The Modern Victory Garden was included in it.    What I found particularly fun about this list is that so many of my favorite blogs were also included in the list.   It’s nice to be included with such a great crowd!                 

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener