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.   This week I am posting my harvest recap early (Saturday) as I am going to be traveling much of this coming week and will be unable to update the blog.   I encourage you to participate in Harvest Monday because it’s fun to see what people are producing from gardens from so many different regions, and how they are using it.             

Tuesday night I harvested some broccoli and a few tomatoes.          

The cherry tomatoes were just eaten as snacks and the regular tomatoes went on the counter to finish ripening up.   The broccoli was part of that nights dinner – grilled pork chops, homemade macaroni and cheese, and steamed broccoli dressed with a bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt.               

The late blueberries are finally ripening and I picked a small bowl full of them on Thursday night.                            

They were eaten almost immediately after the photo was taken.   That same evening I harvested quite a few cucumbers, a couple of zucchini, a leek, some bush and pole beans, and some more tomatoes.                

The cucumbers went into the growing pile in the fridge that I have been accumulating to get enough to make a batch of dill pickle relish.   The cherry tomatoes were gobbled up as snacks and the regular tomatoes went on the counter to finish ripening.   The zucchini was used a little later in the week (on Saturday) for the evening meal, which featured baked salmon and Italian Vegetable Stir-fry.   The leek and beans were used to make Thursday night’s dinner which was ground beef stroganoff (made using leek rather than onion) served on a baked Yukon Gold potato (from our storage supply) and steamed green beans.                     

Friday I purchased a box of Yakima tomatoes which combined with all the tomatoes I have been ripening over the past many weeks and stuffing whole into the freezer – provided enough to do a canner load of diced tomatoes (quarts) on Friday and a canner load of tomato sauce (pints) on Saturday.   I tackled the diced tomatoes Friday evening and was up pretty late to get that wrapped up.            

On Saturday I harvested a whole bunch of cucumbers, which took me over the top for what I needed to do that batch of dill pickle relish.   I also harvested some more ripe peppers and tomatoes.             

The peppers were chopped up and frozen.   The tomatoes went on the counter to finish ripening.   The cukes were processed into 7 pints of dill pickle relish and I had enough extra to make up a batch of refrigerator dills.     In a large glass jar, I place 3 cups of white vinegar, 6 cups of water, 3 tablespoons of canning salt, and 3 tablespoons of sugar.  This is stirred until thoroughly mixed and then some dill seed and 3 whole medium sized dill seed heads are added along with some sliced up onion (some of my limited storage onions) and a large elephant garlic clove (storage garlic) that was chopped up.   To this mixture I added the rest of the cucumbers not used for the dill pickle relish, sliced up into spears.       This then is placed in the fridge and the pickles are ready for use as needed after 24 hours.           

In addition to the dill pickle relish, I also processed the frozen (after thawing them of course!) and ripe tomatoes on the counter into sauce and processed 6 pints.                              

Harvest totals for the (almost a) week of September 19th through September 24th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Beans 0.25 lbs
• Blueberries 0.00 lbs (not enough to round to ¼ pound)
• Broccoli 1.00 lbs
• Cucumbers 5.25 lbs
• Peppers 1.00 lbs
• Tomatoes 3.00 lbs
• Zucchini 1.50 lbs

Total For Week 12.00 lbs

Total Year To Date 321.50 lbs                           

Eggs collected this week – 23                        

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener