Tag Archives: potato

New stuff for next year

When planning the garden for this year, I thought I read that potatoes would only grow about 18 inches. Boy was I wrong! Mine are about twice that! Next year, I need to arrange to have these in the back, or perhaps in front of something early like peas or broccoli. Perhaps I could add a new bed of only onions and potatoes?

What do I do with all this?

There are some vegetables where I have never ventured past the canned versions (like green beans). So having a pound of freshly picked ones forced me to find something to do with them. Obviously, I went to google to figure this out. This recipe was one of the first in the results and sounded good to me. Like it says, you can’t go wrong with bacon and potatoes. I substituted green onions for the red ones since I have so many, but otherwise made it exactly as shown. My wife and I both thought it was wonderful. I was especially excited because every vegetable in it was grown in my back yard. I paired it with grilled zucchini because, as everyone knows, one zucchini plant will produce enough to feed a small town, and I had plenty. I made grilled paprika chicken (also a spur-of-the-moment google find) that was also quite tasty. I liked it so much that will probably make this same meal again in the next few weeks.

First zucchini

The first of the year. I hadn’t checked the garden in a while since it has been raining for the past five days, and this guy was a surprise! It is a little small (about 4 inches), but I am sure there are many more to come. I noticed a few of the flowers have been cut off just below the base, and am wondering if a cutworm of sorts is the culprit. If I have time tonight, I will try to go out and investigate since I have read they are active in the evening (at least when it is dark). I noticed the same flower-sheer type thing with my potato plants as well.

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More potatoes

After digging around a bit more, I was able to find these. For being “New” potatoes, these (at least two of them) are larger than expected. Again, I thought there should be more, but perhaps it is still a little early.

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Potatoes

My potato plants are huge, but if I dig around under them, I can’t find any small potatoes. I thought I read that when flowers appear the “new” potatoes would be ready. Like I’ve said before, I guess I’ll wait and see.

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It just keeps growing

In the last few days, I have been randomly grabbing vegetables as I have been able. I rolled my ankle and was told to stay off it for a few days so that limited my garden time. I was able to hobble my way out tonight to get some romaine and green onions. Below is a few pictures of the potatoes, beans, and tomatoes. From what I can remember, I didn’t have any tomato blossoms this time last year. This year, there are almost 10 groupings of blossoms so I am quietly optimistic.

Spuds

I think the best looking plants in the garden right now are the potatoes. I’ve never grown any type of potato, or even seen them growing (in my recollection) for that matter. I am really looking forward to seeing how they turn out. The next step will be mounding up more soil around the plants to keep the potatoes on the top covered, (so they don’t turn green) when they finally sprout.

The potatoes (and onions) are in

Just came in from planting the potatoes and onions. I might have cut the potatoes too small, and planted them too deep, so tomorrow I may pull a little of the soil out so they aren’t so deep. According to various websites, the traditional way is to plant them in a trench or hill initially with 4 inches of soil on top and then add soil later, re-covering them as they grow. I planted them most of the way down (about 6 inches) and plan to harvest them before they get too big anyway so I might not need the extra piling on of soil.  The onions were a no-brainer. Looking back, I wish I planned to grow more than the 3 squares.

I got mail

The potatoes and onions arrived yesterday and look to be about what I expected. I’m going to have to do some research though on how to plant the potatoes. There are 10 mini-tubers, which the website says will plant a row 40-50 feet. If I follow the enclosed instructions, I think it would be less than half of that. From what I know, I should cut them up into pieces with 2 to 3 eyes and plant 4 per square since they are a smaller size potato. The onions I received are a 3-pack of red, white, and yellow. If it stops raining this weekend, I would love to get them in the ground.

Its in the mail

I just checked my email and received notification that my potato and onion sets have been shipped and should be here in two days. Woohoo! I ordered them in the very early spring from Burpee, but like I said in an earlier post, I think I could have gotten some for much less than what I paid if I went to one of the big box stores (mostly because of shipping costs). At least the ones I ordered are a little different than the standard types those stores sell.