Farmer Friday: Potatoes & Squash

New Potatoes; White Creamers

All Blue potato

Yukon Gold

New Potatoes; almost 5 pounds

I love growing potatoes. They are a pretty easy crop, just remember that the new potatoes will grow above the piece that you planted. I try to plant mine about 9 inches deep and 9-12 inches apart depending on how big the plants will get. I have also grown potatoes in 5 gallon buckets. To do that I just put potting soil in the bottom third of the bucket and plant the seed potato. When it sprouts I add more soil, a little at a time, until the bucket is full. Keep it watered and when the plant dies back dump it out and pick up the potatoes. I usually get about 1-2 pounds from each bucket.

This year I didn't plant any buckets, I planted about 200 square feet of growing beds in potatoes. I planted All Red, All Blue, Yukon Gold, Belinda and White Creamers. Some take longer to finish than others, so I'll be digging potatoes for quite a while.

Biggest onion ever~ 1 # 8 oz

I grew a small bed of onions. In the past I haven't had the best luck with them since our soil is not the best. I was really impressed with the Barbossa and Granex varieties. I will plant a lot more this fall.

Baby Squash

Picked the first squash today; Gold Rush, Bennings Green Tint patty pan, yellow straight neck, Grey zucchini. Just a few were ready, but soon there will be a flood.

Flat & Curly Parsley, Lavender

Nanking cherries

I grew 9 Nanking cherry bushes from seed. They are 3 years old and fruiting. I'll be planting a lot more! They are a sweet / tart cherry and juicy, but not very big.

gopher snake getting a drink

close up gopher snake

I had something amazing happen one hot afternoon last week. I went to move the hose that was trickling on the squash plants and discovered this gopher snake getting a drink. Yep, it was actually drinking water right from the hose!

lambs quarters

A lot of lambs quarters are growing all over. Some people call them weeds, but they are actually good to  eat like spinach. And I feed a lot of them to the chickens.

Yep, as long as I have my garden!