But Wait, There's More!

Just when you think the garden had given up its final ghost, you remember the sweet potatoes that are lurking under the row covers.  I had dug a sample from the sweet potato bed back when I dug my other spuds this fall, and the scrawny little roots left a lot to be desired.  So, I essentially wrote them off as a lost cause and not something I would plant again.

But Tuesday when I got home from work, I decided to dig the rest of them up.  Maybe, just maybe, there would be a sweet potato or two worth the labor.

Boy, was I mistaken!

It's hard to appreciate the harvest there in the wheel barrow.  I had planted just shy of a dozen slips, which were not in the best of shape when they arrived from Maine this spring.  My first sampling did not improve my impression of these veg, but when I stuck my spading fork in and forked up the first plant, I was shocked and amazed to see sweet potatoes of colossal size (pictures do not do them justice):

The harvest directions I found for sweet potatoes say to leave them out in the sun on a screen for a day or two after you dig them so their skins can harden, and then let them sit at about 80*F for a few days to continue developing tough skins for storage. Yeah, right.  It started to rain as I forked over the last bits of the garden, so I dumped the buckets of spuds into the wheel barrow and rolled the whole thing into the covered back porch, where they have sat all week as it rained and barely reached 50*F - forget 80.

Still, this was a nice surprise.  I wonder if really big sweet potatoes are woody and awful, like big radishes, or if size doesn't matter with taste and texture.  I guess the only way to know will be to cook 'em and have a taste.  Until then, I've decided that sweet potatoes may not be so bad to plant in the garden here after all.  I wonder how I save slips for next year...

September Goodness

Monday was labor day, and for many folks that's just a day off from work.  For me, well, it was a regular day off, by I put myself to work, laboring in the garden.  It was time to dig the spuds.


It's not been often this year that I have been impressed with the results of the garden, but the potatoes made me a believer.  Only two of the three varieties made it - the Adirondack Blues were mostly rotted before they went into the ground, but the German butterballs and purple vikings did great.

A whole bushel of spuds!!!

Just look at the size of this baby! 

I've never had German butterballs this big.

Some grew in some pretty interesting shapes.

  And just look at these purple vikings!

These have got to be the biggest potatoes I've ever seen!

Here we are, finally, all sorted by size or variety.

All spuds are now on the back porch curing.  This should toughen up their skins so they store better.  And now that I have an actual root cellar, I'm looking forward to seeing how the do beyond a regular basement.

I also dug up one of the sweet potatoes, but although the roots were awfully colorful, there was not a sweet potato to be seen.  Some of the roots had swellings that might've eventually become "potatoes," but they were too small to bother with now.  Bummer.  So, that vine is going to be composted and I will leave the rest in the ground for a few more weeks in hopes that they will mature.

New Stuff from the Garden

Ah, now there's a thing of beauty:  my first EVER real ear of corn from my own garden!

I was so tickled when I saw an ear large enough to pick that I had to look for more - I found four.  Admittedly, a couple were really only nibblets, but oh, they were good!

So this is Sunday's harvest:  four ears of corn, two cukes, two tomatoes, two carrots, and a large double handful of beans.

Oh, yes, and the onions.  There they are - four very small, sad braids of onions.  All that is left of the nearly 100 that I planted, and, as you can see, only two or three of any size worth mentioning.  I've been told that perhaps I planted them too late - onions are apparently a light sensitive plant and since they can tolerate the cold, I should plant them in April.  I've never had problems before, but I'm living further south now than my beloved mountains, so I guess my garden will take some rethinking.

On a whim last night I decided to dig a potato plant.  It had two large spuds attached, so I dug a couple more - not so robust.  Stilll, I am optimistic for a good harvest of potatoes later in the season.  

And, yes, those are carrots.  I thinned out the patch a little bit last night.  The greens are all so very tall and bushy, but I know that since I don't thin, the roots will be small and sorry.  It's a bad habit of mine.  Every year I tell myself that next year I will thin...I never do. 

Harvest Time!

The pea harvest was a bust, and the beans are not certainly not going to cause the freezer to overflow (after four harvests, I now have enough to bother getting out the blanching kettle and freezing 'em), but last night I rejoiced with my harvest:

My first two tomatoes finally ripened, and I picked my second cucumber!  For those who might be wondering what is wrong with that cuke (because it is rather pale), it is a variety called Boothby's Blonde, which produces small, pale cukes that have a nice light flavor.  There's nothing bitter about these babies.

I'm also very excited about this:

It may be only an ear of corn, but I've never had luck with corn.  This year I got the corn in late, and then it was dry as a bone, followed by torrential rains.  The cornstalks maybe reach four feet tall at the most - I didn't have high hopes.  So I am just tickled pink that there are several ears forming, and they are already several inches long!


My squash have been going great guns, too.  It seems that this is squash country, for everyone raves about how well squash do here.

 

 Now, perhaps you are wondering why I would harvest such a small onion (see first photo).  I didn't.  Well, I did, but not intentionally - it came up with the weeds.  But take a look at that sorry-looking onion patch:

What started out with such promise has completely fizzled.  I don't understand it.  The only thing I can think is that when it rains, the "soil" (and I use the term loosely) turns into a very clay-like slurry.  Perhaps the plants just couldn't handle the heavy rains.  It could also have been the long hot dry spell, but I did water the garden almost every evening.  Could something be getting into the garden and trampling the onions and pulling them out (many are MIA)?  I just don't know.  It will be interesting to see if any potatoes are produced come digging time - they are in the same soil as the onions.

The dill, while short, is doing nicely.  I don't plant dill for pickling - in fact, I can't even stand the smell of dill.  I plant it for the butterflies, but so far not one has taken up residence on any of the plants.  Next year I will do parsley and fennel - the butterflies like these, too.

Despite a shaky start, the sweet potatoes seem to have recovered and are sending out tendrils all across their section of the garden.  I'm very excited about these - I've never grown sweet potatoes before.

This final photo is here merely for comparison.  Two days ago I took a nearly identical photograph of Toby walking by the sunflowers.  Last night I noticed that the sunflowers were at least a foot taller than they were two days ago (see yesterday's post).  Amazing.