Last night, as I noshed on some delectable roasted potatoes I had grown last year that were dressed in olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper, I felt myself get that excited glow I always get when I'm about to sow crops on the farm.
This morning, I popped out of bed, with a healthy amount of vigor which was a bit surprising as last night my two horses decided to go on a full moon walkabout at 3AM. I don't know how I know when they tend to do their rare escapes, but I guess I am not too sad to have gone out into the peaceful moonlit night, whistle, and show my ponies back into their preferred pen. Their new field was just too much freedom and space for them I guess....
Anyway, after a nice breakfast of liquid greens and things, the hubs and I charged out to the garden. We are keeping things nice and compact this year, our garden is only 80X100 feet, which for us is a small garden. The sun was out and I listened to the ducks right next to us in the orchard have a domestic dispute as I marked off rows for the potatoes.
The state of my soil made me squee a little this morning, for twenty years I have been amending the silty sand with load after load of compost and growing cover crops to add matter; the results are just smashing.
My cowboy corgi, Crazy Cora, was so full of Mom won't let me fly through the dirt angst that I must admit I had a bit of a smile on my face for the entire seeding operation due to her fidgeting alone. Being a subspecies of human who truly enjoys frugality, I use no fancy equipment when planting, just an old 1X4 to mark out the rows, and an ancient Pulaski to dig the seed potato trenches.
One lovely thing about today's potato seeding is that every potato I planted was one I grew myself. After many years of trial and error, I have finally figured out how many potatoes to grow to eat for the winter while also having about 3 milk crates of seed potatoes for seeding the following spring. To quote Colonel Hannibal off of the A Team, "I love it when a plan comes together."
Because honestly, in gardening and homesteading, there are a lot of oops or I won't be doing that again moments. Humble pie is a frequent dish in these parts.
After all 240 row feet of potatoes were planted, I moved on to planting something I don't usually have around here, onion sets. If I am going to take the time to grow onions, I usually start them from seed, but the hubs came home the other day with a bag of red onion sets, and I thought I better get those little purple alliums into the ground.
Using my super fancy square foot gardening apparatus (a milk crate), I marked off a bed for the onions to live in. I like to intercrop my onions with fast maturing crops for weed control while the slow growing onions mature. Friday, when I go out to plant my peas, I'll throw some lettuce, spinach, and radishes in between the onions. I planted five to a square foot just to leave space for the greens and radishes. Also, I am optimistic about the size I can get those reds, I want them YUGE!
Which of course means I am going to have to up my fertilizer game. Last year I had some great yields with my combo of composted manure (for certain crops), compost, organic fish and kelp emulsion, and comfrey compost tea. I am going to mess around with some more organic fertilizer combinations in the form of tea amendments, because they are fun. Plus, there's my gigantic pumpkin that I have been seeking to grow for like ever to consider, my dang growing season is so short though that it is definitely a high aim, but I am going to win!
And now I am going leave this garden report, as I have a track meet to attend! Happy gardening to you all!!!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's slightly silty and always salty iPhone.
Love those purple onions! We had a bumper crop this year on our homestead but sadly the potatoes (SA weather is now spiralling into winter) was a sudden crop failure after mildew hit. Nice to be introduced to your post @generikat, thanks for the @minismallholding mention. Happy gardening!
Oh! I am so sorry you lost your potato crop! I hate crop failures, and mildew is the worst:(
Purple onions are almost my favorite, I think my absolute favorite are Walla Walla sweet onions, but they don't keep well, so I am glad that purples do much better in that department. My grandma used to eat them like apples lol!
And I am so glad you stopped by, I am excited to follow your blog!
Never heard of them @generikat! But there's many lovely veggies that we don't get here in South Africa. I'm sure your grandma was super healthy snacking on onions! My one child used to eat garlic when he started on solids!
We rescued a handful of potatoes yesterday. I'm going to post about that soon. They're the size of a marble
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It's brain picking time! Do you happen to know if strawberries have a favorite fertilizer, and, if so, when is a good time to apply it? Back to the subject of potatoes: I think I have a few left for seed potatoes this year. I need to look.
Eee, there's not much to pick, ha ha! I put well composted steer and/or horse manure on my strawberry beds and hit the plants with a foliar feeding of Neptune's Harvest Fish and Kelp emulsion when they bloom.
If you need a few pounds of seed potatoes I can send some home with JT, just let me know!
Thanks for the info and the offer. I still haven't decided what to do with the garden this summer, but will holler if I need more seed potatoes. Thanks!
Potatoes aren't something I will be growing again, I don't think. I can't eat them and I grew them for my husband. No onions this year, unless I can find some seedlings....
The hubs and I don't eat tons of potatoes really, but the hordes of random teens around here can put away the fries, and the old sayings about Idaho and potatoes are true, lol, they do grow very well here.
That said, I'm bummed for you about the lack of onion seedlings. To be honest, we live in onion country, every fall I can buy a fifty pound bag of them for like $8, so since they are heavy feeders and needers I don't usually grow them unless I feel like it. Hope you find some sets though!
Here we go again, and as always, every time i visit your blog and read a new post i learn something new.
You make farming sound so easy and effortless, i guess it's because you've gotten so good at it and you really love what you are doing.
As for me, i'm not really into farming. Let's say i prefer finished goods.
But seeing you break down this process and baring it before my ignorant eyes, i've gotten to see the process behind one of the meals i enjoy so much, which is Potato Porridge.
And i must say thank you for that.
This is a beautiful post @generikat, keep it coming. Because i'll be back for more😁