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!                       

The new thing in our harvest mix this week is some fresh white button mushrooms.   These are from the mushroom growing kit residing in our spare bedroom.   I also harvested some mixed greens on Saturday of mache and young lettuce, swiss chard, and spinach leaves.   The rest of our vegetable needs this week have been coming from storage, home canned, and frozen items.               

We still have about three more weeks before the greens will start really taking off again (increasing day length and sun strength) but I have noticed that they are already starting to show some new growth even if it is painfully slow at this time of year.                                

Harvest totals for the week of January 17th through January 23rd (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Lettuce & Greens 0.25 lbs
• Mushrooms 1.50 lbs

Total For Week 1.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 3.25 lbs                      

Eggs harvested this week - 35                                 

Some Updates                                               

The onion seedlings I started last weekend are largely germinated at this point.                               

Saturday I started a six-pack each of the following tomatoes:

• Defiant PHR (Hybrid)
• Legend (OP)
• Market Miracle (OP)
• Siletz (OP)
• Stupice (OP)
• Sun Gold (Hybrid)

These are ultra early started tomatoes and will require extra attention and prolonged care, as they will not be planted out any earlier than I normally do.   They will be much larger by transplant time though and from my experiment last year I learned that the ultra early started plants provided much greater harvest in our area’s typically short warm season.   I will still be starting some tomatoes at the more usual starting time of mid February, but they will be backups for my ultra early start tomatoes and will be given away to my staff and coworkers if I end up not needing them.     My intention is to use only the ultra early start tomatoes for my own garden needs this year.                                                

I frequently receive requests for information and updates on the chickens so I thought I would take a moment and give you an update and overview on our flock and it’s management.   Our six young hens we acquired as chicks around the first of April 2010 continue to thrive and produce abundantly.   We have been getting between 35 and 37 eggs a week.   The egg production varies from day to day with a low of 3 and high of 6 – but typically averages out to 5 a day.   The hens have a well-engineered and comfortable coop that opens up into a large covered and secure hen yard.   They also have a fenced backyard that they are given free range of during the day from about 8:30 in the morning until dusk.   This large back yard area has a woodlot and shrubs in it that provide them additional protection if needed.   It also has a dry area behind the garage that is protected by a large overhang.   The girls like to use this area for their afternoon dust baths and naps!                                  

We make sure they are in their secured yard and locked in safely (protected from predators) every evening and wait until the sun is up and we are up and about before we open up the gate to their hen yard to allow them to begin free ranging for the day.   They have access to several water containers, layer crumbles, some hen scratch, and free choice grit and oyster shell at all times.   The water and feed are replenished daily.   The coop has a deep bed of pine shavings in it and the nests have sweet smelling timothy hay in them.   The coop gets cleaned once a month with all the bedding pulled out, a good sweeping or shop vacuuming, and then fresh bedding put in.   The coop has it’s own water container, hanging feeder, a heat lamp in one corner that is on a thermostat so it kicks on if the temps drop below 50 degrees inside, and a regular light that is on a timer that switches the light on at 5:30 am and off at 5:30 pm.   The hen yard is raked up weekly to remove the poop and spilled/spoiled feed.   All of the yard rakings and coop cleaning debris is then composted.   This routine of cleaning keeps everything tidy and smelling good.   I think it contributes to healthy birds as well.   Over the course of the week we probably devote an average of about 3 hours to the care and maintenance of the flock and the collection of eggs.   Currently the hens are enjoying free ranging in the garden area but in February we will be installing a short section of cross fencing which will allow us to keep them out of the garden beds during the summer growing season.   We will still be bringing them into the garden area periodically for some supervised grazing of the walkways, but only when we are there to ride herd over them and protect the crops.   Even with this change they will still have a very large area available to them for free ranging in during the summer season.   We intend to let them free range the garden area once again during the winter months but only after the crops are harvested and the winter crops are covered for protection.   They do a great job of reducing the slug population and keeping weeds down.

The last update I wanted to provide you with is on the tree kale/collards plants.   I received several starts from a regular reader of my blog (Cherie) earlier this winter and I potted them up to root out.   Initially I had some very good success with virtually all of the plants successfully rooting out and sprouting new leaves.   However, I made the mistake of moving them out to the unheated greenhouse to grow on and a prolonged period of cold and wet knocked out several of the starts and made the remaining ones look quite sickly.   I salvaged the remaining plants by moving them back into the shop under grow lights.   Of those, two are still looking very frail but one of them revived wonderfully and is doing great.    Here it is today.              

Even if this is the only one that survives, I should be good to go because once this is firmly established in the garden; I can take more cuttings from it and root them out to propagate more plants.   I am treating this plant with great care though, as it appears it may be the only one that I get to maturity. 

That’s about all the news and updates for now.   The PVC fitting I needed to finish the second-generation horizontal pea trellis project has been ordered and shipped and should be here by next weekend.                     

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener