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.

Garden roundup for March

I usually start these roundups by saying how many eggs our hens produced.  Well, they quit laying towards the end of last year.  Between their age and the cold, it wasn’t too surprising.  Well, about the middle of January we got an egg.  And then about every two or three days we’d get another one.  Given that egg prices were going insane, it was nice to have enough eggs for the occasional cake or whatever.  Then one morning I went out and found that five of our six chickens were dead.  Something had gotten in and killed them.  And it came back a few days later and got our last chicken.  About a week later we did manage to trap the likely culprit: 

So we don’t have any chickens right now.  We need to get some supplies, and then we can hopefully get a crew together to board up the holes and do some other, low priority but needed things in the coop.  Once that’s done, we’ll get some chicks and hopefully in a few months get back in the egg business. 

Other than the five or six eggs we managed to get, the only other harvest these last few months were the parsnips.  For some reason, we didn’t have that many germinate last year, but we got enough for four meals.  One with fresh parsnips, and the other three in the freezer.

The only thing planted so far this year have been some potatoes.  I’m doing a little experiment where I planted seven smallish potatoes and we’ll see how many I get in return with minimum work.  I’ve planted potatoes at the end of fall to have them come up as soon as it warms in the spring, but I didn’t get around to it last year.  It’s still freezing a few nights a week, but it should be a few weeks before they start growing, so hopefully it will be warm enough by then.

The only other garden stuff I’ve been working on are my raised beds.  I have three put together – there’s still one more I need to put together – and two of them are “filled.” I would love to have them fully full, but I’m trying to fill them on the cheap.  I put logs and sticks in the bottoms, but I’m filling them with regular dirt.  I’m screening the dirt to get the big rocks out, but it is a slow process.  I started last fall, but I stopped once the snow came.  And, of course, it seems every other day it rains, which gums up the works.  My plan/hope is that while I’m using just plan dirt, I’m also adding in a bunch of organic stuff, from leaves and what I cleaned out of the coop to banana peels and tea bags that normally would have gone into the compost.  Hopefully, as this breaks down it will turn my dirt into okay soil.  And over the years as I add in compost and other stuff, the soil quality will only improve.  That’s the plan.  We’ll have to see how it works out.

Garden roundup for October

During October, our chickens only laid 35 eggs, of which 23 made it to the house.  It seemed like we only had two hens laying, one laying good eggs and the one laying thin shelled ones that always break.  It has been warmer this last week or so, and it does seem like they’re laying more – three eggs were laid on the 31st, two good and one thin – but we’ll definitely have to get some chicks in the spring.

I think the only things harvested this month were I picked a couple squash and we’ve dug a bunch of potatoes.  There are still more potatoes, it’s just a matter of weather, time, and if my back can take it. 

Since things have slowed down so much, I’m not planning on doing a roundup for November.  But I will have a year end roundup, where I’ll list out everything we’ve canned or frozen, as well as plans for next year.

Garden roundup for July

During July, our chickens laid 91 eggs, of which 70 made it to the house.  I wish I could figure out why so many are breaking. 

Anyway, for the June update I said that June was hectic, but July has been … hecticier?  There were several first harvests I meant to post a blog for, but never got around to.  For example, in July we picked the first: peas, green beans, potatoes, green pepper, and onions. 

The slugs really did a number on our pea plants, so there aren’t that many plants, but some of them are producing pretty well.  So far, I think the only thing we’ve done with the peas is use them to fill out some jars of green beans we’ve canned.

This was about half of our first harvest of green beans.  And while the slugs did some damage and the weeds have taken over a bit, the green beans are doing really good this year.  We’ve already canned enough for our normal yearly use, and they’re still coming.  Now we’re basically just letting them go for shell beans.

We have some tractor tires we grow onions or carrots in, but we also have a few car tires filled up with dirt.  These I use for sunflowers, or I’ll put a potato in.  I can start them early, weeks before the normal potato patch is ready to plant so we can get some early potatoes.  And a couple of these were dying, so it was time to dig them up.  The yield wasn’t that great, but considering I’d planted little, marble sized potatoes, the return was pretty good.

I’m not sure what happened to our peppers this year.  They grew a bit, but then seemed to stop.  They’re only a foot or so tall, but there are a few peppers on them.  The biggest thing we use peppers for is making spaghetti sauce, and we still have a few left over from last year, so we should be fine for peppers.

Last year, I planted a bunch of onion sets.  We got some nice sized onions out of them, but we also had a few that didn’t get much bigger.  Over winter, we used – or had to throw away – the nice sized onions, but were left with a dozen or so smaller bulbs.  I planted them, and in this case, it turned into three onions.  I went to pick one, but two came.  I didn’t get a picture of the other one because it was cut up for dinner.

I think that pretty much covers July.  The currants, raspberries, and blueberries are done for the year, and the blackberries are starting to finish.  Which is good, because coming soon will be kidney beans, corn, watermelon, and a glut of tomatoes.

Garden roundup for June

During the month of June, our chickens laid 100 eggs, 77 of which made it to the house.  As to the broken eggs, I think they’re just messing with me.  For example, I used to just record the number of good eggs and the number of broken ones.  But then I realized I should keep track of which nests the broken eggs are in, to change them more often.  For the first round, there were eggs broken in all three nests, so I changed all of them.  But for the second round, eggs were only being broken in the left and right nests.  Since everything in the middle nest was still good, I figured I’d only change the left and right ones.  So when I gathered eggs one day, I cleaned the grass clippings and shredded paper out of the left and right nests.  There wasn’t any egg leakage in the shredded paper, but I left the nests empty for a few hours to dry out just in case.  Well, when I went back to fill them in, there was a broken egg in the center nest.  And since I changed everything, broken eggs seem to alternate between the center and right nests. 

June has been a hectic month.  We discovered that it wasn’t a rabbit eating our peas and beans, but slugs.  We’ve tried several ways to deal with them, and I don’t know if they helped, or if the plants have just gotten big enough that they’re growing faster than the slugs can eat them. 

The red currants are just about done.  We have a couple containers in the freezer, but if I had the time I could easily fill a few more.  Our red raspberries are going strong, and our black raspberries and blueberries are starting to hit their stride.  I mentioned when I first picked some black raspberries, that we had one patch where they grow pretty big.  I said I should get a picture, so ….

The small one is one I picked at random from one of the other patches.  The first one I picked at random from the big patch wasn’t that much bigger, but then I saw the one in the photo.  The big ones are nice because they fill the container fast.

Something else we picked, on the last day in June, was our first tomato.

We buy a bunch of tomatoes from the nursery that are all at the ready to transplant stage.  But we also buy one or two older tomatoes that probably should have been transplanted a couple weeks earlier.  Not only was this one blooming, there were little tomatoes already on it when we finally transplanted it.  This way, we get some tomatoes earlier.

Other things, we finally got the potato patch worked up and our potatoes planted.  As well as a spot for carrots. 

As I said, June was hectic, and July will probably be even worse. 

Garden roundup for April

During April, our chickens laid 87 eggs, of which 67 made it to the house.  This is less than the 107 they laid last month.  There are two possibilities for this.  The first is our hens are getting pretty old.  It does seem that whenever we need a bunch of eggs for baking or whatever, we need to crack a few extra because we find some with blood spots in them.  So I’d say their egg laying days are numbered.  The other possibility is, now that the weather is more or less good, they’re running off and laying in some hidden nest.  I did find one nest with three eggs in it that I just threw in the compost because I wasn’t sure how old they were.  My dad is the one who lets the chickens out in the morning, and he says there’s one that immediately runs off to the barn, but I’ve looked in there multiple times and haven’t found any nests.  Of course, something that’s happened in years past, is I’ll stop looking in the barn for nests, and then a month later I’ll go to grab something and find a nest with two dozen eggs in it. 

I finished digging up all of our parsnips.  We have 17 quart bags in the freezer.  One of my goals in the next couple of days is to add some compost to the parsnip bed, work it up, and plant the new parsnips.

Other things I’ve planted so far are some lettuce, which I’m trying something new with, so there should be a post on it in a few weeks if it, hopefully, works.  I also had some potatoes that sat on the porch all winter and were starting to grow.  I planted a couple, but then it froze one night and I didn’t think to cover them.  In years past I’ve planted some potatoes in the fall and let them come up the next spring.  Sometimes these have been hit by a frost or two, but they seem to keep coming back. 

In past months, I’ve said that I planted some onions that had started to grow.  Well, I finally had a spot worked up for them so I transplanted … some.  I think I had planted seven bulbs in three batches over the last few months.  All of them grew, but then they stunted.  I don’t know if they didn’t get enough light, or it was too cold, or what.  But when I transplanted them I found that five of the bulbs had rotted away to nothing.  The other two … might still be alive.  I’ll have to see if they do anything.  I still had five or six little bulbs from last year, one of which had started to grow, so I planted them.  I’ll have to see if they can grow bigger this year.  And lastly, last year for the first time I tried planting onion seeds.  It didn’t go well.  I think all the ones I planted indoors and transplanted out died, and I think few of the ones I direct sowed even germinated, and most of them later died.  I still had some seeds left, so I planted all of them, and again, I’ll have to see if they do anything this year.

There might be something big happening tomorrow.  If it does, I’ll do a post about it, probably in a few days.  If it doesn’t work, I’ll just mention it next month.