I spotted our first potato flower today—a bit later than last year's first, but that's to be expected since we planted them late. The Yukon Golds and the All Blues are loaded with buds, but so far none have popped. We got some much-needed rain tonight, though, so perhaps they'll be inspired to show themselves tomorrow.
This year we've paired our potatoes with corn and beans. The taters were buried in trenches while their companions were settled on the top of the mounds. The plan was to fill the trenches in as the taters grew. So we did just that.
We got some straw and chopped it up a bit with some hedge clippers. By the way this is not easy, straw is tough. Meg has got some guns.
After we filled the trenches pretty good with straw, we looted some compost from a heap of leaves that was left in our yard since before we even moved here. The compost was pretty good, but Meg ended up getting some poison ivy on her face. It's not too bad, but it still sucks all the same.
We topped off the straw with the black gold and gave it a good bit of water. What all this will do is allow the potatoes to produce tubers off their buried stems and it will also allow the corn and beans to generate stronger root systems. Oh, and it looks real nice too.
Potato beetles suck. This striped little shit did not receive the same affection as did the mice we found yesterday. Oh no siree. We squashed him (or her, I really don't care) proper.
Our potatoes are coming up like weeds. The weeds are coming up like weeds, too, but the potatoes are a much more welcome presence in the garden. The All Blue sprouts are my favorites because they're, predictably, all blue.
Our potatoes are off to a bit of a late start this year—we finally got them in the ground this afternoon after being stymied by a late delivery and then fifteen straight days of rain (sixteen, I guess, if you count the showers this afternoon). We've got All Blues, Yukon Golds, and some red variety that we picked up at the local co-op last week. The goal is around 50 pounds, and I think we've got enough planted to make it. In between the potatoes are rows of corn and beans, so we're hoping to squeeze a lot out of produce from those three beds.
Our potatoes showed up today—a bit later than we'd have liked, but they're here all the same. We got some All Blues and Yukon Golds, and we'll pick up some kind of red variety to add to the mix.
We're off to northern PA for some (possibly cold, wet) camping this weekend, so expect some backdated posts to be thrown up hastily on Sunday night or Monday. Also, I have about twelve million unread garden blog posts hanging about in my Google reader, so I'll be making the rounds to see what all you folks have been up to.
