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 people are producing from gardens in so many different regions.   Check it out and join in!                        

On Tuesday, I cut four medium/small-sized heads of savoy cabbages and pulled some green onions.   These were used to make a savoy cabbage salad, which accompanied some leftover spinach salad (in last week's harvest totals), baked beans, and roasted chicken thighs for our dinner that night.    The cabbages were photographed but the onions were a follow up harvest (realized I need them for the recipe!) and I was too busy cooking at that point to stop and take a picture of them.                        

On Wednesday, I harvested quite a few celery plants and a colander full of broccoli.    All of this harvest was prepped and frozen for later use.                

On Thursday, I harvested some more broccoli and some green onions.    These were used to make a broccoli and beef stir fry (served with cooked white rice) for that night’s dinner.                            

On Saturday, I harvested more than a pound of lettuce, which was cleaned; torn into chunks; spun dried; and then made into a large salad.   I also harvested some garlic scapes, green onions, basil (not pictured), a few stalks of celery, and a few stalks and leaves of swiss chard.   These latter items were used to make a garden style spaghetti with meat sauce that used all these ingredients in the sauce (along with a jar of last year’s home canned diced tomatoes and home canned tomato sauce).   Some of the green salad was served with the spaghetti for dinner on Saturday night and the rest went in the fridge to be used for lunches and dinners in the next few days.          

Sunday was a big harvest day.   It was another cool and overcast day and there was lots of items in the garden that needed to be picked and processed for freezing (which is a good thing to do on a gloomy and chilly day).   I harvested two kinds of kale – Toscano and Dwarf Improved Siberian, a lot of swiss chard, several stalks of rhubarb, and some more broccoli.                 

The broccoli was used for Sunday nights dinner.  The menu was sliced up chunks of kielbasa laid on top of baked beans (baked in a dutch oven) and served with steamed broccoli topped with a little butter and a sprinkle of salt. 

The swiss chard stalks were removed from the leaves and sliced up.   The stalk pieces were blanched and then frozen on a cookie sheet to be put in a freezer Ziploc bag once they are frozen solid.   The leaves were chopped into large pieces and then blanched and frozen in the same manner I do spinach and kale in 1 lb packages.            

I processed the kale by stripping the leaves from the large stems (stems are diced up and fed to the hens) and then chopping the leaves into large pieces which were then blanched and frozen in 1 lb packages.                     

The rhubarb is just sliced and then frozen on a cookie sheet until solid - at which time it is then placed in a Ziploc freezer bag.                  

Harvest totals for the week of June 13th through June 19th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Basil 0.00 lbs (did not round up to 1/4 pound)
• Broccoli 3.50 lbs
• Cabbage 1.75 lbs
• Celery 4.50 lbs
• Garlic Scapes 0.00 lbs (did not round up to 1/4 pound)
• Kale 5.75 lbs
• Lettuce 1.00 lbs
• Onions 0.25 lbs
• Rhubarb 1.25 lbs
• Swiss Chard 4.50 lbs

Total For Week 22.50 lbs

Total Year To Date 68.25 lbs                            

Eggs collected this week – 34                                 

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener