New Potatoes

New Potatoes

Oh how I dearly love little new potatoes! I planted these in June and dug the bed today. They were getting a little sorry looking and the yield was not that great, but they will taste wonderful boiled up with garlic and smashed with some butter.

This bed just didn't get enough good compost put on it. There were signs of Texas root rot, a really nasty fungus that kills plants. While most of the plants lived, they were sad looking and didn't live up to their full potential. So, note to self, next potato beds get priority for good compost! Really good thermophilic (it got real hot) compost is full of good bacteria and fungi that keep the baddies at bay. And all those billions of little organisms help feed your plants too.

Spinx Moth Pupae

The potato bed also had a lot of insects hiding in and under the shredded paper mulch, including this weirdo chrysalis of some sort. (I googled it; a Spinx Moth pupae). Well, whatever, the chickens thought it was a delicious treat and one hen got it away from the others and slurped it right down.


I cleaned up the mulch and some of the bugs as I dug the potatoes and delivered it to the compost chickens who energetically hunted down every little bug they could find.  They even found a giant green caterpillar that I hadn't noticed.

former potato bed

I raked up the bed and added some compost. It's all ready to plant again. Maybe tomorrow I'll have time to finish setting out the beet starts.
















We save all the paper and cardboard and when the box is full I bring it over and use it for mulch. Right now it's going around an apple tree, with a bit of composted manure to help weight it down.

mulch

tomato garden

The main tomato garden really needed a drink today. I'd skipped a watering because for 2 or 3 days now I woke up to huge black clouds which were really promising, but never amounted to anything. Hopefully the plants didn't get too dry.