The Modern Victory Garden

The blog went quiet for a week because I was traveling in Pennsylvania on a visit to my daughter.   I had a lovely time and if you would like to see a photo slide show of some of the places we visited (particularly Longwood Gardens!) then just click HERE.    While I was in Pennsylvania, I was able to work a visit and garden tour in with Robin from The Gardener of Eden.   Robin is as delightful in person as she is on her blog, and her new garden at the community plots is really impressive.   Through her blog I have watched as she transformed a field of weeds (at the start of the year) to the lush and productive garden it is today.   She is truly an inspiring gardener.                 

Back home, the garden did fine in my absence.   Before leaving, I watered everything very well and picked everything that needed to be harvested.       

In addition to the raspberries I picked from our patch,  Scott from Opt Out En Masse stopped by the day before I headed out of town and brought me a pie plate full of raspberries from his garden.   They were absolutely delicious!   The raspberries were a barter trade for a few tree collard/kale starts I had for him.    I gave him a quick tour of our garden and we had a nice visit that afternoon.   It really is fun to meet up in person with bloggers I regularly follow and I had the pleasure of meeting two of them this week alone!   

I returned six days later to find lots of sugar snap peas ready for harvest and the start of a nice wave of ripening Sun Gold tomatoes.         

While it has not been hot here at home, the temps have been staying in the mid to upper 70’s which is helping the tomatoes to get serious about producing some ripe fruits.   The forecast for the next several weeks is for more of the same – nothing terribly hot but warmish and dry.   I am hopeful that I may yet get some ripe tomatoes, cukes, and zucchinis this summer.   The peppers in the greenhouse are coming along well and I have several large peppers that are ripening to red.   The extra warmth and protection from rain that the greenhouse provides really helps the peppers.    The warmer weather has helped the green bean patch as well.   I have small young beans developing and I will likely need to do the first picking by this coming weekend.   The corn also appreciates the sunshine and warmer conditions. 

The summer garden crops are moving on to center stage, but in the wings the fall and winter crops are getting ready for their turn to shine.   I have been busy transitioning several garden beds to fall crops.   Some of the fall and winter crops have been in the ground for some time now (such as the parsnips, leeks and carrots), but others are planted mid-summer (either as transplants or direct seeded) in order to grow to maturity before the day length and sun strength significantly decreases with the approach of fall.   I recently planted out a large quantity of broccoli transplants and some cabbages.   They seem to be coming along nicely.          

Growing under lights in the house are some more lettuces, kale, swiss chard, napa cabbages, and pac choi.   These will be planted out in the weeks ahead once they are big enough and hardened off properly.   In addition, prior to leaving for my trip to Pennsylvania, I direct seeded some more carrots, golden beets, spinach, and some onions to be overwintered.   The beds don’t look like much right now, but they hold the promise of fresh produce for fall and early winter.   All of these areas planted up have been recently opened up by harvests of other earlier crops – such as the pea patch and the garlic.  

4X4 foot section of spinach planted next to the young strawberry patch.       

Another 4X4 foot section of garden bed planted up with storage onions (Top Keeper).   These are intended to be overwintered and if I am successful with that - will provide better sized storage onions next year.   I have not had good success with overwintering onions in the past, but my previous efforts were with transplants not direct seeding.     I am hoping this will prove more effective.    Later in the fall, I will plant part of this bed up with next year's garlic as well.                 

This last growing area is planted up with some more carrots (two kinds - Bolero and Mokum) and some golden beets.    You cannot see them in this photo but the beets have already germinated.             

We are heading into the busy harvest months of August and September.   It will be harder to be away from the garden for any real length of time in the coming weeks because the harvest items will require more frequent attention.   I am glad I was able to work this trip into my schedule in advance of the coming harvest peak.

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener