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

Wednesday’s harvest included a couple of zucchini, a medium sized leek, and a nice bunch of snap peas.    I had quit picking the snap peas to let them set and mature seed but the plants (Cascadia) kept producing some young crisp pods along with the fattening seed pods so I could not resist doing yet one last harvest from this planting for the year.                  

All of the Wednesday harvest was used to make that evenings meal - spaghetti with a garden vegetable and meat sauce served with steamed snap peas (dressed with butter and a little sprinkle of salt).   

Thursday I harvested some ears of corn.                   

These were eaten for dinner that night.    The menu was baked salmon fillets with dill, oven roasted/crisped potatoes (harvested last week/baked and were in the fridge – I just sliced them up, tossed them with oil and a sprinkle of salt and crisped them in the oven) and of course… corn on the cob with a little butter and salt.  

My intention was to spend Saturday doing quite a bit of harvesting and preserving so that we would have the day free on Sunday for a planned trip to the seashore.   I put in some volunteer hours at the Giving Garden on Saturday morning after which I immediately got out in the garden and harvested a cucumber, a zucchini (yes there is one in the following picture it is just buried!), some tomatoes, and two artichokes.   I also harvested some peppers and a little basil.          

Before I could proceed with the rest of the harvesting to be done, I was interrupted by my husband who it seems had managed to badly cut his hand with the machete - doing some brush cutting at the edge of the garden.   It was a very deep cut and partially cut some tendons.   Needless to say, everything was put on hold and we spent the afternoon and evening in Bremerton at the Emergency Room at Harrison Hospital.   The injury occurred at around 2pm and it was 8 pm by the time he was discharged and we made it back home.   I will spare you the picture of the actual cut (yes, I took one with my cell phone) as it makes the stomach turn to look at it, but here he is on Sunday morning sporting his outrigger splint/cast combo that keeps the hand immobile to protect the damaged tendons.             

We were starving by the time we got home that night and enjoyed the leftover spaghetti from Wednesday for a late evening dinner with the artichokes I had picked earlier in the day – steamed and served with a little Caesar dressing to dip it in.   Yummy!   Nothing else was done with the harvest from Saturday though until Sunday morning when I cut the cucumber and zucchini up into spears and put them in the refrigerator dill brine in the fridge.   The tomatoes were put on the counter to ripen more, however the ripest ones were used to dress our hamburgers we had for dinner Sunday night.   The peppers were chopped and frozen for later use.   The basil had wilted too badly to be usable and was tossed into the compost pile.

The original plan was to spend the day at the beach on Sunday, but with his injury my husband was really not feeling up for that.   Instead, we just hung out at the homestead and I picked up where I left off on Saturday when the injury interruption occurred.   Sunday’s harvest included an overflowing colander of bush beans, quite a few beets, and a large number of ears of corn.        

The beets were roasted on Sunday and then chilled in the fridge.   They will be used on Monday to make a chilled beet salad by slipping the skins off and then slicing them up and serving them with a drizzle of olive oil and quality balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of sea salt.   The green beans (well purple really!) were blanched and then frozen.   The corn was blanched and then the kernels were removed from the cob.   I got a large bowl of finished kernels from this harvest, which was bagged in 5 smaller sized zip loc freezer bags with about 1 and ¼ cup of corn in each freezer bag.  Just the right amount for us for a meal and for several recipes that have sweet corn as an ingredient.  

I still have quite a few ears of corn left on the plants for fresh eating harvests in the coming week.   My cat Sid enjoyed helping me harvest the corn – soaking up the warm late summer sun.                  

Harvest totals for the week of August 29th through September 4th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).             

• Artichoke 0.25 lbs
• Beans 2.50 lbs
• Beets 3.00 lbs
• Corn 9.00 lbs
• Cucumbers 0.00 lbs (not enough to round up to ¼ lb)
• Herbs (basil) 0.00 lbs (not enough to round up to ¼ lb)
• Onions/Leeks 0.25 lbs
• Peas (snap) 0.75 lbs
• Peppers 1.00 lbs
• Tomatoes 2.25 lbs
• Zucchini 0.75 lbs

Total For Week 19.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 223.50 lbs                              

Eggs collected this week – 21                                  

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener