Friday, October 01, 2010

Garden update

Well, the garden is winding down for the season. On Tuesday night, Jim and Shannon came over and we dug the potatoes. Not that we really had to dig; they were straw potatoes, so it was more a matter of removing the straw and checking the first 2 inches of dirt.

We harvested around 30-40 pounds. Not bad for a trial run of 6 pounds of seed potatoes. I will definitely do straw potatoes again next year—and increase the number, too. In case you are wondering, straw potatoes are simply seed potatoes placed on the surface of the ground and covered with 3-6 inches of straw.

In this case, we put them on 6 inches of leaf mold (partially decayed leaves). The resulting compost when we dug the potatoes was marvelously black, much nicer than the compost I get from the city. I'm definitely looking forward to more home made compost!

In other news, we picked the last watermelon. It was 18 inches long by 10 inches in diameter, weighing in around 20 pounds. Nice and sweet, but not as good as the ones from July; our hot, dry August and September definitely affected the flavor.

The fall planting of peas is in bloom. I ate the first fall radish earlier this week, the spinach is getting close to big enough to eat, and the fall planting of bunching onions (green onions) is showing itself. I definitely need to get the top on the greenhouse this weekend; they are predicting 35º F for Sunday.

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