This past season we have had some successes and some not so successes. One of our not-so-successes has been our nightshades, particularly our tomatoes and potatoes. Our eggplants seem to be okay but we don't have a lot. Much like last year our tomato and potato plants got
late blight. This is a nasty "water mold" that makes the plants turn brown and shrivel up. The fruits or tubers do the same thing so they have to be picked before they are affected. This year the tomatoes were really bad and fast. Our potatoes have not been quite so affected, but we thought it best not to take any chances. Despite having to harvest early, we seem to have enough potatoes until next season. We both estimated that the full trug would be around 60-70 pounds.
So out I, Jennifer went to finish digging up the potatoes. There is something magical about digging up potatoes. Knowing that this one small slightly squishy, wrinkly, and multi-legged lump of starch that made it through the winter can become a mound of beautiful, delicious, healthy and long lasting potatoes is much like a caterpillar to butterfly to me. I love the anticipation of finding out how many potatoes I am going to find, like partaking on an archeological dig again and again.
Now we only have the equivalent of around 70 row feet of potatoes, but when there is a ton of mulch over them it can get tiring. This year was a bit of an experiment (code for can't quite remember what was done in the first place) as there were three different types of potatoes in the same bed. There were also some planted in parts of the forest gardens...the extras that didn't fit into the beds. All together I think there were five different varieties.
The first big job was to move the wilted and withered old hay that we had used as mulch. this job was somewhat sad because a nice little world had been created. there were pill bugs, wood lice, ants, millipedes, centipedes, earwigs, slugs, and many, many spiders both on top and below the mulch. On my digging journey I did discover that some voles had had some dinner parties featuring my potatoes as the main course. There was one handsome fellow among the mulch. He was special, I could tell by his house. Mr. Grass Spider had built an impressive home in the nooks and crannies of the mulch. Another, less sophisticated Grass Spider had made a home not too far away, but it was not nearly as nice as the fellow's house below. I did make sure to give them a shake to let them know that danger was on it's way.
There is a lot to know about growing potatoes and I know barely any of it. I would have never thought that different varieties would behave so differently. this is my own ignorance, because I know how different tomatoes can be. By harvesting all the rest of the potatoes I have learned a few things about what I wanted in a potato that I had never even known!
length of time to maturity: it was really interesting to see which potatoes had a lot of tubers on them and which didn't. The blue ones did better than a heritage variety which averaged two tubers per plant; barely enough to make it worth planting. The winner had several good sized tubers on each plant even now, a month earlier than I would have normally harvested.
depth of tubers: some of the plants required me to dig quite deep to get at the tubers. the worst for this was the blue ones. The best were almost at the surface of the soil but stayed beneath the mulch.
distance of new tubers from original tuber: having to dig around in the soil a foot from the original plant is a bit of a pain. Having the tubers close together reduces the risk of putting a tine through a spud and pointless digging to try and fins that one last starchy lump. The best plants literally had all the new potatoes all clumped together so digging was really easy and satisfying.
After I had dug up all the potatoes it seemed like a good time to just wander around the gardens. This is probably one of my favourite activities. Great joy comes from just wandering too see what has changed in a small space. Sometimes I am just amazed at how fast a community can change. One my travels through the garden a
garter snake made her presence known. She wasn't that large so I suspect that she may have been one of this years young ones. I had seen one last year, but was not sure if any were still around, now I know. I guess our big rock is a good hibernaculum. While inspecting the heavy and healthy climbing cucumbers I narrowly missed stepping on a
leopard frog hiding from the sun's heat under a cucumber leaf.
After collecting all the potatoes, cucumbers, beans, and whatever else I could find that needed to be picked I headed back up to the house to sort and cure the potatoes. Looking into the trug, I saw there were a good number of potatoes of various sizes.We managed to finish off the voles leftovers.
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