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 harvest is largely a repeat of last week’s.   More greens (swiss chard and kale) were harvested and some chives as well.   The greens were enough to weigh in at a ¼ pound but the chives did not weigh enough to round to a ¼ pound and so they are not in the tally for this week.              

Harvest totals for the week of March 28th through April 3rd (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).        

• Lettuce & Greens 0.25 lbs

Total For Week 0.25 lbs

Total Year To Date 11.75 lbs                         

Eggs harvested this week – 30                         

On Sunday I planted out starts of celery, swiss chard, cabbages, and several varieties of kale. I also transplanted my strawberry starts that have been growing in large pots. You may recall that I rooted out runners from the mother plants last summer and ever since then I have kept them in containers through the winter. Today I put them into their permanent home in the garden. All the planting out of starts was done after first prepping the beds by adding compost (if it had not already been done previously), aerating them with the broadfork, dusting on some organic fertilizer, and then hoeing and raking the top few inches of the bed to make it smooth. By doing several beds each weekend, I methodically work my way through the entire garden while getting plants into the ground at their proper time. It spreads the workload out and makes the big initial spring planting up – less of a daunting task.                       

The newly planted seedlings look great. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to share with you, as my camera died this weekend. Since my cell phone camera is not very good quality I am not going to even bother messing around with that as an alternative. I will be purchasing a replacement digital camera soon but in the meantime, I will have to rely on words for my blog updates.                                 

Weather continues to be unseasonably cool and wet in my area. I am hoping that we get a break in the weather by next weekend so I can get the potato patch planted. The seed potatoes have been chitting in the house and need to go into the ground soon. I really need the weather to warm up to our usual average high temp for this time of year (mid to upper 50’s) because my greens are not taking off like they should be. We are getting down to the last of the frozen produce and working on using up the canned items so having the new fresh harvests start producing more steadily and in greater amounts is much needed.                           

How are your supplies of preserved produce holding up? Are you supplementing them with fresh harvests now, or will it be a while before that is possible?   

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener