Potato Overload

Potatoes are my kind of crop.  You stick them in the ground in May, forget about them, and then dig up 20 times what you planted in October.  I harvested 50 pounds of potatoes this year from about 25 square feet of land (2 pounds per square foot).  That is about equal in weight to all the peas, carrots, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus I grew, with a lot less effort.  The only real key is to give them rich, deep soil.  I also should have covered some in dirt as they grew - you can see some of them turned green because they grew out of the soil and started photosynthesizing. They produce a neurotoxin called solanine when this happens.  I will not be eating these ones - I will most likely use them as seed potatoes for next year.

I plan to store them in shoe boxes wrapped in several layers of breathable landscaping fabric in the garage during the winter.  The goal is to give the potatoes a pitch black, cool, and humid but not airtight environment.

Check my blog in a couple days from now and you will see me being a little creative with the taters...

Ah, Poor Bird

October must be "Critter Calamity Month". After last week's fish fiasco, I was witness to the murder of this little sparrow, who didn't mind me getting up close to take his final picture. Moments after I had snapped the shot, Noel dashed out of nowhere and clenched the poor bird in his unrelenting jaws, escaping to the safety of underneath my car where he devoured his catch crunch by crunch. For an eight year old cat, he does pretty well at this.

The Acanthus mollis (Bear's breeches) below is approaching two full months in bloom.

Finally, one crop that did very well over the cool spring and summer were potatoes. Pictured below are Solanum tuberosum 'adirondack blue' and a white variety whose name is escaping me. The blue ones, by the way, have made excellent french fries. I dyed some of the white potatoes with red beet juice for the 4th of July and made red, white, and blue "freedom fries" which was a big hit to say the least. After doing some searching on the internet, I discovered red-fleshed potatoes. So next year's freedom fries will be 100% authentic and natural and not tampered with in any way - although maybe that's too un-American...

At least something likes the rain.

I guess one redeeming thing about this cold and wet spring is it is paradise for cool season crops like lettuce, spinach, peas, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower & carrots. Even though they are growing fairly slowly in this cool & cloudy weather, they will be at their healthiest and most flavorful when they're ready to start harvesting in 3-6 weeks from now.

Below in the still-under-construction raised bed section of the garden, I've got growing (closest to farthest) some Adriondack blue potatoes (Solanum tuberosum 'adirondack blue'), spinach, cauliflower, & Brussels sprouts. I also have some snow peas sprouting up in the bed to the right (not in the picture).


Two weeks ago (in mid-March), I started the seedlings below in the greenhouse. They include: nasturtium (on the left), sweet corn (top center), lupin (center), lots & lots of basil (front center), carrots (under the plastic lid) and mesculin (right).