The Modern Victory Garden

Harvest Monday

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 from so many different regions, and how they are using it.   Check it out and join in!          

Monday August 1st was my first day back home after my trip to Pennsylvania.   My priority that day was to harvest the abundant snap peas and Sun Gold cherry tomatoes.   I also harvested some carrots but did not manage to get a picture of them. 

Monday’s harvest was incorporated into that evening’s dinner which was baked seasoned/breaded pork chops with chunks of carrot baked along with them in the same pan (butter was put in the dish and melted in the hot oven before adding the chops and the carrots) plus steamed snap peas (served simply with some butter and a sprinkle of salt) and some homemade macaroni and cheese.      

Tuesday’s harvest was just one lone tomato and I missed getting a photo of it.   This was used along with some lettuce from last week’s harvest (in the fridge) to make tacos for dinner that night.  On Wednesday I harvested some raspberries in the early morning before work.   They were eaten fresh by the two of us and were gone before the day was out.        

That evening after work I harvested some tomatoes, lettuce, and a very small pepper.                        

The cherry tomatoes and tiny pepper were just eaten raw as snacks.   The rest was used to make that night’s dinner - bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches made with sliced up garden onions (prior harvests in storage), the large fresh leaves of lettuce, crisp bacon, and thick slices of the ripe tomatoes on honey multigrain bread spread with lots of mayo.   Yum!   

Thursday night I harvested a full-size tomato plus a handful of cherry tomatoes, a medium sized pepper, and a bunch of sugar snap peas.              

The tomatoes were just eaten raw as snacks.   The rest was used to make the evening meal, which was a stir fry of onions, peppers, sugar snap peas, and strips of lean pork.   After the vegetables and meat were cooked a spicy Thai peanut sauce was added and cooked until heated through and then it was served with cooked rice.                             

Saturday I harvested a nice variety of items including celery, beets, tomatoes, a pepper, a small zucchini, cucumbers, basil, bush beans, and some raspberries.     

Most of the celery and all of the cucumbers, zucchini, and raspberries were eaten raw as snacks.   The rest was used to make Saturday nights dinner.   The feature of the meal was slow cooked barbecue baby back ribs.   I did a dry rub of barbecue seasoning spices on the ribs and then slow cooked them in the oven for almost 4 hours at 300 degrees.   During the last hour I brushed on some sweet and tangy barbecue sauce.   The barbecue baby back ribs were served along with Italian Bean Salad (tomatoes, basil, and peppers were used along with previously harvested onions from storage), steamed green beans (served simply with a little butter and salt), and roasted beets that were peeled and then diced up (also served with a little butter and salt).   Delicious!      

Sunday was another harvest of a good variety of items including potatoes, carrots, snap peas, lettuces, and a nice head of savoy cabbage.                 

The lettuce was washed, spun dry, and then torn up into pieces and made into a very large bowl of green salad.   This will be kept in the fridge and used for lunches and other meal prep over the next several days.   Making up salads on the weekend when I have more time, helps me manage a hectic workweek.   The snap peas were just rinsed and eaten raw for snacks.   The rest went into the preparation of Sunday night dinner – grilled steaks, oven roasted crisp potatoes, and a coleslaw made from the cabbage, grated carrots, a little diced onion (previous harvest - in storage) and my favorite sweet slaw dressing (1/8 cup of maple syrup, 1/8 cup lemon juice, ¾ cup of mayo, and a dash of grated nutmeg).                             

Harvest totals for the week of August 1st through August 7th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Basil 0.00 lbs (not enough to round up to ¼ pound)
• Beets 0.75 lbs
• Cabbage 1.25 lbs
• Carrots 0.75 lbs
• Celery 1.00 lbs
• Cucumbers 0.00 lbs (not enough to round up to ¼ pound)
• Lettuce 1.25 lbs
• Peas (snap) 2.00 lbs
• Peppers 0.25 lbs
• Potatoes 2.00 lbs
• Raspberries 0.50 lbs
• Tomatoes 1.75 lbs
• Zucchini 0.25 lbs

Total For Week 11.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 152.75 lbs                               

Eggs collected this week – 33                           

Some Creatures In My Garden

My garden always has a few creatures in it, some are welcome and some - not so much.   The wild rabbit that was chomping down my strawberry patch earlier this year appears to have moved on (or was eaten by our local coyotes).    But almost as big as a rabbit, our maritime Pacific Northwest slugs are a force to be reckoned with in the garden.   There are a lot of them this year in the potato patch.   Despite regular slug picking patrols on my part, they still are rather plentiful.         

Luckily the potato leaves and vines are lush and thick and the plants are holding their own despite the abundance of munching slime makers.           

There is another group of creatures that live on the edge of my garden and have a voracious appetite.   They would eat the garden down to nothing if given the opportunity.   Just to show you what a difference the fence makes… look at this picture of my bean patch on the garden side of the fence.                

And then look at the bean patch leaves and vines that grew through the fence… well, look at the ragged edge of what USED to be vines and leaves!    

The creatures that did this munching are actually welcome residents on our property.   Have you guessed who they are?   Well, let me just say that I don’t begrudge them the tidbits they eat from the edge of the fence because they provide us with 4 to 6 eggs a day on a regular basis.   Yes, that was my little flock of hens that have been trimming any vegetation from the garden that dares to grow too close to (or through) the fence.   Here are three of them in the chicken coop nest boxes this morning, busy working on their contribution to our good eating.        

Another creature we purposefully work to keep on our property are the worms in our worm box.   You may recall that we set the worm box up the first part of July.   We have since been putting food wastes and kitchen trimmings into the box regularly and are now shifting over to putting wastes into the right side bin.                      

In the left side, the food wastes are all getting gobbled up by the worms and our population of worms is definitely growing.   When you dig into the bin even a little bit you will reveal many worms and lots of baby worms – well at least for a few seconds before they all quickly vanish back into the muck of the pile they are working on to avoid the exposure to light.    They are a little hard to see in a photo but if you look close you can see several of them that had not managed to wiggle out of sight before I snapped a photo.                 

I will close with a picture of a creature that is always in my garden whenever I am there.                

My cat Sid likes to sit in the shade of the corn patch or under the large leaves of the cabbage patch and keep me company while I work in the garden.   I like to think it is because he is guarding me while I work, but I think it is just his inner tiger calling him into his vegetable garden jungle.                    

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener