The Modern Victory Garden

The focus of my time lately (outside of my professional life that is) has been on four primary things:

1. Coaxing the summer crops along despite the unusually cool season we are experiencing.
2. Getting items harvested when optimal to do so, trying to ensure nothing goes to waste from inattention.
3. Completing the final planting up of critical garden beds with fall or overwintered crops.
4. Preparing the homestead and garden for the coming fall and winter season.

Summer Crops

The summer crops are doing remarkably well considering how cool our summer season has been this year.   I am being extra vigilant to watch for fungal diseases because the risk is already high for those problems in my naturally cooler and damper region – but even more so with an extra cool year like this.   Fortunately, while cooler, our weather has not been particularly wet this summer, which has helped a lot to keep rots and fungus problems to a minimum.   In fact, I have had to really pay attention to irrigation needs because my garden beds have such good drainage that they have a tendency to dry out quickly during our dry season.   Absent rain events, I rotate through the garden on a weekly basis watering specific zones on different days such that by the end of the week all the areas have been watered at least once.   Doing it this way keeps the work load for this routine maintenance manageable, particularly during the busy work week.  

Another summer crop task I have been doing lately is hand pollination of the pumpkins.   The melons, butternut squash, and pumpkins are the most adversely affected crops by our abnormally cool summer.   The other cucurbit family plants (zucchini and cucumbers) are also negatively impacted but they produce harvestable fruit so quickly (once they get going) that a late start to production is not necessarily a big problem - as it only means I may have a shortened period of harvesting versus no harvest at all.   However, the pumpkins, melons, and winter squash have a limited period of time to develop a very large fruit and bring it to a fully mature state before the plants are knocked down by disease, pests, or the onset of our heavy cold fall rains.   This year the squash-family plants are so late getting started that it is quite probable I will not get any properly matured items at all.   In fact, the melons and butternut squash plants are so immature (not even producing flowers yet) that it is now virtually impossible for them to produce mature fruit prior to the plants demise.   I know this to be the case but just don’t have the heart to pull them out because they are just now getting some nice growth on.   The pumpkins on the other hand are just a little further along and have been producing flowers and immature fruit.   The temperatures dipped back down to rather chilly levels last week and the bees went quiet.   I could not afford to have the flowering pumpkins wait any longer to be pollinated giving their low chances of finishing up with mature fruit as is… so I went to work last week on a daily basis hand pollinating anything that was flowering if I also had an open male flower available to grab pollen from.   If I am lucky, my extra attention may reward me with a few mature pumpkins despite the cold summer.                     

Harvesting

Lots of crops are coming to maturity or heavy production and need to be regularly harvested to ensure the full value of the planting is taken advantage of.   Some crops are only producing enough to provide for our current fresh eating needs – the tomatoes for example, but other crops are producing larger amounts that we process and put by for later use in the coming dark days of winter when fresh harvests are limited to mostly cold hardy greens.   The bush beans, red cabbage, and beets are crops that are currently being harvested for preserving purposes and the corn, cucumbers, zucchini, and a greater volume of tomatoes will shortly be ready.   So far my preserving efforts have all been freezing with no canning done to date.   That will change if the tomatoes ever really get going and when the cucumbers ramp up their production.                             

Fall and Winter Crops

Many of my fall and winter crops have been in the ground for quite some time now.   The parsnips and leeks were both planted in late spring and at this point are both getting quite sizeable but not quite yet to full mature status.   These are both very slow growing crops and literally take the whole summer in order to be ready for fall and winter harvests.   Even in spring, I am planning for the fall and winter garden.   Mid summer plantings of broccoli starts, cabbages, carrots, beets, onions, kale, and spinach are all growing along and on track to be ready for harvesting when the summer crops are all winding down for yet another year.   Here’s a picture of the fall broccoli transplants when I transplanted them out on July 17th.             

And here they are a month later on August 17th.                      

This past weekend, I pushed to get more fall crops in because mid August is generally my last opportunity to plant certain faster growing items and still have sufficient time remaining (as the day length shortens and sun strength diminishes) to reach harvestable size before the plants grind to a very slow growth level by late fall.   Last Sunday, I planted another large bed of spinach, corn salad, lettuces, and transplanted out some more kale, cabbages, pac choi, and swiss chard.   Since we are in a dry period right now, I have to water these newly planted beds more frequently to ensure the young plants or germinating seeds experience a higher survival rate.                        

Preparing for Winter

There are some routine things we do during the hot days of late summer to prepare for the coming winter.   Obviously harvesting and preserving food from our summer garden is one of those.   Other tasks we are doing include stacking the winter firewood supply, cleaning the roofs of our buildings of moss and debris and cleaning out the rain gutters.   In addition, as I plant up fall and winter crops I am beginning the process of covering them with hoops and bird netting cover in anticipation that they will need to be kept secure from the flock of hens that we will allow to roam the garden area once again over the winter months to eat weeds and lower the resident insect populations.                  

That about sums up the things that have been occupying my time of late.   I hope you too are enjoying summer’s bounty while also preparing for the coming dark days of winter.                     

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener