The first egg from our new hens!

They're still learning.

Potato tests

Last fall and over winter, I had several ideas for tests to do this year involving potatoes.  For example, last year I got my first metal raised beds which I filled on the cheap using a lot of fill dirt.  Mixed in with this fill dirt was a lot of organic stuff like grass clippings and banana peels as well as some compost.  The idea is that while the soil might not be the greatest this first year, by adding compost every year it should get better.  So one test I wanted to do was to get three containers and fill one with just the fill dirt, one with the fill dirt and some compost, and one 50/50 fill dirt and compost to see how big of a difference compost makes.  But I didn’t have three empty containers that were the same size, and there was a lot of other stuff going on so I never got around to it.  Maybe next year.

Another test I wanted to do was I had seen some posts of people mocking people – worried the economy would collapse under Trump – of wanting to grow all their food.  The mocking was along the lines of, “You don’t even have a shovel to work the soil up,” or something.  So I had the idea of marking off a section of the yard and planting some potatoes as best I could to see if they did anything.  I think the plan was to also plant some in a raised bed to compare.  But I forgot about it until after I planted all my beds, and again there was a lot of other stuff going on.  Again, maybe next year.

But the third test, I actually did.  We have some old tires we grow in.  I know, I know, you shouldn’t do that, and I’ve been meaning to write up a post why I still do.  The main reason being, I live in a part of the country where if people have a brush pile that is too wet to burn, they’ll just throw some old tires on to get it going.  People worry about stuff leaching out of the tires, but worst stuff might be blowing in on the wind no matter where I plant.  Anyway, the bigger old tractor tires I plant with onions or beets or whatever, but the smaller ones I plant with sunflowers and potatoes. 

I have seven tires for potatoes, and last year after harvesting them I covered them in grass clippings.  I wanted to do a very basic test where I did very little work and started with smallish potatoes.

I took a handful of shifted compost and put it on top of the old grass clippings.  I then pushed a potato into the compost.  And since the level in the tires had fallen, I filled them up with the fill dirt.  Once the potatoes sprouted, I mulched them with grass clippings.  And that was it.  I didn’t even water them.  Although, we did have a wet spring, and it’s only the last few weeks – when the potatoes were already dying – that it’s become hot and dry.

Five of the potatoes came up, and after waiting a couple of weeks, when I dug up the other two, I found one had rotted and the other I think was eaten by a mole.  I replanted those tires, but I didn’t include them in this study.  Later, when the plants were starting to go strong, one of the remaining five and one of the replanted ones were killed.  Something chewed them off right above the mulch.  So I lost almost half of what I planted for the test.

Still, when I dug up the first plant, I was pleasantly surprised.

I should have used the same container for comparison, but probably that green one was about the size I planted.  And this is what I got from the four surviving plants.

Was it a great harvest?  For starting with smallish potatoes, only fertilizing with a handful of compost when I planted them, and not watering them, it was okay.  We’ve already eaten some of the larger ones.  I might save seven of the smaller ones to plant next year.

The one difference I plan to make for next year, is while harvesting them I noticed the soil was rather hard since there’s little organic matter in it.  So when I have an afternoon to kill, I plan to work up the soil, add some compost, and then cover it with grass clippings so the worms and such will have the rest of fall and winter to work.  Then depending on how low the level is next spring, I might not add more dirt.  We’ll have to see.

But that is the results of the one potato test I was able to run this year.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to do more next year.

Garden roundup for July

In no particular order, here is what I picked in July.

I had mentioned that the first patch of lettuce I had planted was eaten by slugs, but I had a second patch coming.  Well, I was able to pick from it a few times, but it’s been buried by a nasturtium.  I don’t know if I’ll get any more from it or not.  I have planted a third patch, but it hasn’t come up yet.

Last month I mentioned that I’d be picking our green beans, and I have picked four or five times.  I was worried if we’d get any, for various reasons, but I believe we had enough to can ten quarts, and there’s still a bag in the freezer we can add to any soup mixes we make.  There are still plenty of beans on the plants, but I didn’t pick them soon enough so they are getting big and tough.  Which is okay, because we’ll just let them go and get some shell beans.  These we either can by themselves or with kidney beans, or as part of soup mixes.  So I’ll probably get them in August.

We grew a bunch of onions last year and stored a bunch.  Early in the year, I noticed some of them were starting to grow, so I planted them.  About mid-July, I noticed that they were flopping over, so I pulled them.  A couple had rotted, but the rest were okay to start drying.  Shortly after that, I noticed that many of the onions in the first batch of sets I’d planted were flopped over.  Since we were supposed to have rain for two or three days, I figured I should just pull them and get them drying.  I left the ones that were still upright, but by the end of July they were starting to flop over as well, so I pulled all of them to get them drying.  The second set of set onions I planted are still growing, but were only planted a few weeks after the first set, so it won’t be long until they are drying.

I had a couple potatoes come up in my parsnip bed.  They’re either from the old potatoes I put in the bottom when I was filling it, or more likely some potato peels mixed in with banana peels and tea bags I added to start composting when I added the dirt.  One was starting to die, so I dug it up but only got a couple small potatoes.  A tad disappointing, but they were free potatoes. 

Very disappointing were my peas.  My total harvest was about seven pods.  What was worse, is that each pod only had one pea.  Last year, when we had better harvests, I saved a dozen or so peas I planned to plant in a raised bed as a sort of test.  But I forgot about them until after I had everything planted.  I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but I had an open space and decided to just plant them and see what happens.  I know the heat of summer isn’t great for peas, but who knows.  I might end up with more peas than from my spring planting.

My kidney beans – the few that came up – are producing pods.  With some shell bean padding, I might be able to can a quart.  We’ll see.

We buy our tomato plants from a local greenhouse.  Most are a few weeks old, but for the last few years my dad has also been buying an older tomato we plant in a big pot near our garage.  These usually already have blossoms when we get them.  In July, we got the first tomato from this older plant.  As I type this on August first, there’s another one that is about ready, and one of the younger plants has one that’s starting to ripen.  So August will likely be the tomato month.

It will also be zucchini month.  I had a lot of issues getting my zucchinis this year, but I have four, healthy plants starting to bloom.  So in a few weeks we’ll be buried in zucchini.  I also have a couple cucumbers that are … growing.  We’ll have to see if I get anything from them.

In July I had the last picking of currants.  There were more, I just never had the time to get around to pick them.  My dad and one sister picked most of our blueberries.  I think my mom said we had seventeen quart bags in the freezer, and I think my sister has about the same.  That’s despite the blueberry cakes that have been made, as well as my dad putting a handful in his cereal every morning.  And the end of July saw the first blackberries ripening. 

Somethings that we haven’t had this year, are raspberries – red and black – and yellow transparent apples.  The apples, I think, got wiped out by a late frost, and I think the birds got most of the black raspberries.  I’m not sure what happened to the red ones.

July was a busy month, and August will probably be just as busy.

July 2nd harvest

 Today I picked out first green beans.

It wasn't worth canning so few, so we froze them.  We'll see how many more I get in a few days.  And we'll either can just plan beans, or we were cleaning out the freezer a week or so ago and found some peas from last year.  We also have some bought carrots, so we might just make some soup mix.

I also picked some blueberries.

These are the first blueberries picked.  I picked one the other day, and I guess my dad and sister have also picked a few the last few days.  But all of those were eaten immediately, whereas these ones will either end up in muffins, or will be frozen to eventually end up in muffins, or pie, or whatever.

Garden roundup for June

During June, I picked our first leaf lettuce.  I was able to pick twice and got enough for, half-a-dozen sandwiches or so.  I would have gotten more, but the slugs just pretty much ate everything.  I have more lettuce growing, so hopefully the slugs won’t notice it.  We also picked some green onions, and harvested some parsley.  I also picked the first of the red currants.

Some not great news is our peas and kidney beans.  We have some, but only a fraction of what I planted.  For the beans, there’s a six-foot section that has beans as normal, and then there’s six feet gaps between the other plants.  And it’s almost the same for the peas.  It has been a wet spring, so I guess a lot of the seeds just rotted, but it’s odd that the six-foot section with beans and peas also seems to be the wettest area of the garden.  But they are blooming.  They’re only about four inches tall, but they’re blooming.  So I don’t know how much we’ll be able to get from what did come up.

Other not great news is my continuing difficulty with zucchini, watermelon, cucumbers, and cantaloupe.  Everything I’ve planted has either been old seeds that didn’t come up, the seeds were eaten by something, or rotted, or they did germinate but were immediately eaten by slugs.  None of these things I’ve planted in the garden has come up.  I did plant some of the newer zucchini seeds in pots, and the plan is to plant them once they are big enough to survive a slug or two.  The downside is that normally I plant one or two seeds indoors so that they are ready to go out once it warms up.  I then direct sow some seeds to try to spread the zucchini out some.  But now I have four plants that will be producing all at the same time.  I also planted a couple cucumbers in pots.  But unlike the zucchini, only half the seeds came up.  Hopefully, I can get them in the garden in the not-too-distant future.  As to watermelon and cantaloupe, I think I’m just giving up this year.  If we want any, we’ll just have to buy some.

Things coming up.  I’m typing this up on July 1st, which is when I picked the first blueberry.  I was watching our chickens – they spend most of the day in a little caged in area, but I’ve been letting them out to start roaming for an hour or so – and they were near the blueberry patch and I just happened to see a ripe one.  Well, it wasn’t fully fully ripe, but close enough.  So in the coming weeks we’ll be picking more of them.  Something else I’ll be picking will be the green beans.  It will either be the second or third I pick the first ones.  I’m not sure how well that harvest will go.  They’re in on of my raised beds, but I filled them on the cheap and apparently didn’t pack the soil in well enough, because after I planted it sank, way more than I expected.  And while I thought I planted them far enough apart, they are pretty close, which means a lot of the blooms are down out of the light and air.  I don’t know if they self-pollinate, or if the bees and whatnot will be able to find all of them.  We’ll just have to see how it goes.

First currant harvest

 

There were more to pick, but it was so hot they'll have to wait.

Garden roundup for May

During May, the only thing we harvested was some rhubarb.  We picked it three times over the month.  Most of what we picked ended up in a couple batches of rhubarb bread, but my mom also froze a couple bags. 

In May, I also planted: carrots, corn, peas, kidney beans, and some potatoes.  I had started some seeds indoors, but the only thing that came up was a cantaloupe.  I planted it, but I don’t know if a slug got it or what.  None of the other cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini, or cucumbers came up.  Some of these are old seeds, but the other stuff shouldn’t be.  One possibility, is that it has been a cold, wet spring, but it has finally warmed up.  I’ll check a few days after this is posted, and if nothing else I’ll plant a bunch more.  Of course, I’ve already planted seven or eight zucchini seeds, and if I plant seven or eight more, they’ll all come up and we’ll be drowned in zucchini even more than we usually are.  We also bought some tomato plants, as well as some peppers and broccoli, which I’ve also planted.  Besides the zucchini and stuff, all that I have left is some more potatoes.  I’ve just had too many things going on to plant them.  But there should be a few good days next week I can finish up planting everything.

The one problem I have so far – other than stuff not coming up – is the slugs chewing up my green beans.  We set out some beer traps last year, and we had some leftover beer, but it rained like every other day.  We used some extra plastic tubs you get sandwich meat in, and just the other day I realized they come with lids.  So I’ve cut some holes on the sides for the slugs to get in to the beer that won’t be watered down now.

I guess the only other news is our chickens are growing.  Which is great, except we still have to get the coop fixed up, and they’ve almost outgrown what we have them in.  But, as I’m posting this, we’ve finally gotten around to fix it up.  There were unexpected things with the coop, as well as some personal drama that held things up.  But the roundup for June should have news about the coop, as well as more harvests.  I did pick some leaf lettuce the other day, but it ended up on some cheeseburgers before I thought to take a photo of it.  Also, our red currants are starting to turn, so I might be picking them in a few weeks.  Hopefully, there will be other good news.