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!

Farmer Friday

yep there is a chicken on my back

One of the oldest chicks this year jumps up on my back any time I squat down in their pen. Buff Orpingtons, especially the male chicks are extra friendly. The girl chicks are more standoffish until they reach point of lay, then I am practically tripping over them whenever I go out to the pens.

Fresh cut herbs, flat and curly parsley, lavender, oregano

Getting ready for market tomorrow. Cut some bunches of herbs, flat Italian parsley, curly parsley, lavender and oregano.

new white potatoes

I poked around in the potato patch and found a few white potatoes to dig. This is the earliest I've ever had potatoes. The yellows, reds, blues and purples are not ready yet, but what fun when they are.

wild four o'clocks with tansy in front

The wild four o'clocks are really pretty; here they are almost over taking the bed of tansy.

The tomatoes are coming

first squash blossom

I should have zucchini for market by next week; earliest ever!

Sadly there is no lettuce this week. Any big enough to pick was too bitter because it's trying to go to seed. And the next succession planting was eaten by a rodent. There was a little chard and kale. I have more kale planted. More lettuce and more spinach this fall.

If the pack rats and rabbits hadn't eaten the plants I"d have cauliflower and broccoli.Maybe next year. But man will I have squash and potatoes!

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.

Harvest Monday

Zucchini, Rond di Nice

 Thanks to Daphne's Dandelions for hooking up gardeners all over the world for Harvest Monday!

Another first this week, the Italian zucchini Rond di Nice (round from Nice). This one weighed in at 1 lb, 2 oz, the next one was 2 lbs, 6 oz. I ate the first as a salad, chopped with salt and pepper and a sprinkle of balsam vinegar. The second I sold at the farmer's market.

Red Pontiac and Mountain Rose

I dug all the Red Pontiac potatoes left and grubbed gently around some of the other varieties. The others aren't really ready yet but I found a few Mt. Rose. They are the bright red ones. I don't know if they will hold onto that bright color as they get more mature but if they do then I will probably switch to them for a large planting next year. They will probably sell better at the market than the lighter colored Pontiacs.

Princepe Borhgese & Snow White tomatoes

I picked over 4 lbs of small tomatoes, mostly the Princepe Borghese, with a few Snow White and Red Currants. I sold most of them at the farmers market; no one else has any tomatoes yet. But people are looking for slicers so next year I will try and get my big tomatoes planted much earlier and try and have tomatoes in early June.

I forgot again to take my camera to the market so no pic of my table. I didn't sell any chard or greens this week but two other venders also had greens. I did sell a couple of herb plants and will try and get some more cuttings taken and potted up, especially of my different mints.

The broken branch from the peach tree that I put in a jug of water in the kitchen softened up all it's peaches, there were 28 altogether.

strawberries and plum

A few strawberries trickled in and a few plums with bird pecks were blown off the tree in the wind.

Rainbow carrots

A few small rainbow carrots. These are Lunar White, Amarillo Yellow and Purple Dragon. I love the look of the Dragon's when you slice them, bright orange insides with red/purple outsides.







And YAY! we finally got some rain. Our last rain was March 18. Sat. afternoon a huge storm rolled in and we got .2". This morning the air smells so good and fresh. I love it when it rains. That storm was a total surprise tho, it wasn't on our forecast! and totally unexpected. I'm hoping for more very soon, that would be a big boon to the garden and really help with the water bill!