Planting Potatoes

We finished planting our potatoes the other day and hope to have another fine harvest this fall. I have to admit to having an affinity for potatoes like some people do for tomatoes. I love to try all of the different varieties and have found very few that I don't like, and then it is mostly a performance issue and not taste. This year we will be growing many of the same potatoes as last year with the addition of two new to me varieties, Shepody and Viking Red.

These are the potatoes we saved out for seed and allowed to sprout a bit in a warmer area of our root cellar. We only ended up planting/needing about 2/3 of them.

Shepody is supposed to be a good producer, store well , and be great for french fries. We don't eat too many fries but I thought I would give it a try because of the production qualities.

Viking Red is similar to Viking Purple in that it is supposed to have a white flesh, produce well, and be resistant to scab...we shall see.

I don't have any special way of planting potatoes, we do save most of our own potatoes for seed and have done so for quite a few years now. We simply build a row of loose soil (in a different location every year) full of well composted material, plant the potato deep and pretty much call it good until fall harvest, very similar to the method described here - Modern Victory Garden. Potatoes are possibly our easiest crop to grow and the most productive of all our vegetables providing an immense amount of food for us, our chickens, and even the dog during the winter months.

My very experienced and trusty assistant planting "All Blue" potatoes

Chief Hunter

All work and no play makes Mike and Micki very dull grandparents so we set aside our garden duties and spent the weekend foraging the river banks and forests for wild edibles with the grandson, Hunter. At some point, he decided he was part Indian and asked to be called Chief Hunter ~ I suggested "Chief Dumb Bear" but he did not approve of that title so Chief Hunter it was. Anyway, our first trip proved to be most fruitful as we found numerous asparagus plants beginning to bear, but we were about a week too soon so did not find enough for a meal.

The wild parsley, now easily identifiable, was in its prime.

Just as we were leaving Chief Hunter found a patch of morel mushrooms. "Grandma! He yelled. There are morel mushrooms everywhere!" He was so excited as this was the very first time he found them all by himself...we are such proud grandparents. The boy was able to easily identify old asparagus ferns and the new shoots that accompanied them, sage, parsley, and the mushrooms...perhaps we are rubbing off on him after all.

Today, we ventured into the forests to search a few of our favorite spots for more morels and, although we only found one, everyone had a great time. We thought perhaps our "working dog" should start learning how to become a truffle hound...he loved the idea but bit the top off the first and only mushroom we introduced him to; this new duty might take a while for him to perfect.

Rowdy, leaping across a branch of the creek.

Grandpa following suit...but with less grace.:)

Chief Hunter, sharing a moose hip bone with Rowdy. I don't know? It's Northern Idaho.


Our jeep was a muddy mess so we decided to be lazy and splurge on a car wash...one of Hunters favorite chores.:)

Grandma, scrounging for quarters wondering if she had enough to actually get the vehicle washed.:(

Seed and Seedlings

We collected a bit of seed off wild asparagus a few weeks ago that we found along a river bank. Each asparagus "berry" contains six little seeds that germinate quite readily. They can be gathered off the ferny female plants in the fall or early spring and will store for many years. Also planted were the rest of my 2007 seed that was obtained from the ancestors of my own unruly plants, they had excellent germination. It will take a few years for the plants to become established well enough to produce large spears but time passes quickly when one is patient.

We have been planting apple, pear, apricot, plum, walnut, cherry, chestnut, currant, jostaberry, gooseberry, and raspberries. I must have planted over a hundred of these little starts in our woods and field this past week, all of which were grown from seeds and rooted cuttings started last year. I am hoping that some of the trees grown from seed in previous years will start to bear fruit this summer.

A few one year old apple and pear trees in transit to a new home.

Pots of Josta berries waiting to be planted in perminant locations.

Black raspberries will root anywhere that the stem touches the ground, these ones were tip rooted last fall.

The onion seedlings are only a week or two away from being transplanted...they can't wait to be free of their confines. There are also a few leeks and chives in this bunch but the majority are Yellow of Parma and Jaune Paille des Vertus onions. Both are excellent for storage.

We purchased a few dozen ramps a while back and are happy to see that they have been growing quickly...I'm glad they like the cold as it has been pretty nasty out of late.

Potting Tomatoes and Three Courses of Kale

We started potting our tomatoes and little tomatillos in 4" pots the other day, my wife's an old pro at this, me, I'm very slow. She roughly packs them into the pots with assembly line quickness while I want each one to be just perfect and am so gentle and careful that I am best left to deal with other tasks like making sure she has all the supplies needed for the operation and telling her to be careful with the plants. She assures me that tomatoes are tough and can handle it. She is right, but still...

The root cellar is still full of everything and the garden of greens.

We celebrated kale last night with a veritable kale salad extravaganza. A kale and potato salad, a kale/chicory/celery/root veggie salad, and a warm kale and squash salad. Mmm...Mikey likes kale.

A Little Green in Amongst the Brown

While most of the garden is still covered in a veil of drab brown a few things have started to put forth new and most welcomed green growth. The chives have awoken from a long winter's nap and are now poking up through the remnants of their past, straining upwards as the afternoon sun beats down upon them. It has taken us a few years but we finally have enough of these tasty little alliums growing in various plots that they are for more than just looking at but eating as well.

French sorrel is popping up everywhere. It has the same tang as wild sorrel but the leaves get much larger. This is one of the grandson's favorite greens, I caught him sitting in a patch sharing it with the puppy the other day and had to pull him away before he turned green from eating too much of it.

Parsley, ever faithful to us, has managed the winter quite well and is now springing forth with vibrant new growth. It is so much more than just a garnish to us and one of the few foods that seems to be part of almost every single meal that we partake in.

Chicory with all of it's brilliantly colored florets has also held steadfast all year around. It has always been a treat that we are forced to share with the voles who love to pull it into their subterranean tunnels and have a little winter feast of their own. This year, however, they never showed up for the party.

Spinach that was planted late last fall is slowly but surely starting to put out a bit of new growth under our row covers. I planted some more yesterday in another row to follow this crop. Not much though as come June it will all bolt to seed anyway.

The source of nutrition we depend on the most during the winter months is kale and along with parsley and turnip greens makes up the majority of the numerous salad ingredients we attempt to grow outside 365 days each year. We froze many gallons of fresh kale last spring before the aphids showed up and have been enjoying it all winter in soups, potato salads, and it even makes a great pizza topping. I just planted a whole covered row of it for an early June harvest as the over wintered kale will quickly bolt to seed once the weather warms. I even started a small flat of it in the greenhouse just to test the germination on some of my older seed.

For a few recipes on what to do with all that kale check out this great blog I ran across today -365 Days of Kale.

Where the Wild Things Grow

My wife and I took the puppy for a long walk along the river awhile back and saw that buttercups were coming up everywhere, so very early, and me with no camera. So we went back the other day and took a few pictures and noticed that even the honey bees were out and about. Last year I didn't see any bees until June and this year they are out in early March. It must certainly be a sign of good things to come.:)

We found our first wild edibles of the season as well, a type of wild onion was growing everywhere. I brought some home to plant in the garden, my goal being to let them go to seed. We were talking about how fun it would be if I could cross them with our Red of Florence scallions. I held some of the little scallion bulbs over from last season so perhaps if they bloom at the same time? I wonder if wild onions flower annually or biannually, guess I will find out soon enough.

I also gathered a few cuttings off a willow type tree that grows along the river banks as they would seem to be a most excellent source of basket making materials. I soaked them overnight then stuck them in the garden's soil to hopefully root up and grow, we shall see.

During our wanderings we came across this little plant just emerging, it has a flavor similar to celery or lovage. Can anyone help me to identify it? Perhaps a type of wild parsley?

Onion Seedlings and Such

With the days slowly getting longer the sun is finally able to climb above the wall of trees that surround our gardens and shine down upon our greenhouse warming it up inside, 81° today...a regular hothouse. As we have little room and even less patience for seedlings in the house I am trying to get them moved into the greenhouse a tad earlier this year. I moved some of our potted plants and all of our onions and leeks that have germinated thus far into the greenhouse to make room for recently seeded tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers...and so our gardening season begins.

The onions, leeks, and scallions can handle a bit of cold weather after a few days of acclimation. As a matter of fact, the soil in their containers has partially frozen a couple times now during the night with no obvious side effects. We made the decision to make do with last year's leftover onion seed, due to a backorder on this year's seed that was slow to arrive, and seem to be having excellent germination with the Yellow of Parma and Jaune Paille des Vertus storage onions but our Borettana seed has not performed as well, perhaps a bit of patience is in order. I also planted a couple flats of Red Globe, Sweet Utah, Candy, and some scallions that are doing splendidly. As soon as our celery and celeriac have finished germinating they will also be booted into the cold to shiver with the alliums.

These former denizens of our basement dungeon are more than happy to brave the cold as fresh air and sunlight is what they really crave. The Swiss chard, sorrel, endive, and parsley are starting to green up a bit.

The first dandelions will be those that were held over from last summer, I have yet to see any outdoors but soon they will begin to appear.

Rhubarb coming up in a pot...I'm really not sure why, just because I wanted to see how it would do I suppose.

The last of our celery is starting to put out new growth as well.

Of Bark Splitting, Free Eggs, and Lessons Learned...

Last summer's heat was a bit challenging for a few of our smaller fruit trees, most being only 4-7 years old. Towards the end of the gardening season I noticed that two of our apricots and a pear tree had developed some pretty ghastly wounds in the form of bark that had split wide open in numerous places along both the trunk and limbs of the trees. This, having never happened before, was definitely a cause of concern for us and prompted me to dig up some information online that suggested perhaps the trees had suffered from sunscald...dang.

Our Chinese (Mormon) apricot tree is in pretty bad shape due to sunscald

Apparently sunscald is fairly common among younger thin-skinned fruit trees. Fortunately, it is often not fatal to the tree and I was very happy to see lots of new buds had developed on ours this winter signaling that the trees were still full of life. So from what I have been reading I will need to perform a bit of surgery on the trees and remove some of the curled bark thus helping the tree to recover and hopefully form calluses over the wounds. That and make sure that all of the trees get an adequate and steady supply of water to help prevent this issue in the future...lesson learned.

This young D'Anjou pear tree looks bad but is in better condition than the apricot


As for the free eggs, a few weeks back the grandson commented in a long forgotten conversation that the eggs he was eating were free. The free comment was not lost on me and this past weekend I shared with him a few of the secrets of life. I told the boy that now that he had grown into a strapping young five year old it was time he started earning his keep and proceeded to explain to him that the eggs he had partaken in were not really "free" at all. I shared with him the fact that caring for the chickens that laid those eggs required a bit of effort on our part and that they did not just magically appear in our refrigerator.


So, early the next morning we went out to the chicken house where I taught him how to perform his new duty, the monthly chore of cleaning the old straw out of the nesting boxes and replacing it with fresh, clean material. I explained to him one of my many theories, if the nesting boxes became too dirty the birds would begin to look for a better place in which to lay their eggs. I told him that as long as we kept the boxes cleaned at least once every month the birds did not seem to have this tendency and that the last thing we wanted was to wander around in the forest looking for stray eggs...he agreed that that would be quite a hassle. Under the hens strict supervision he did a pretty darn good job and will probably never refer to eggs as free again but might enjoy them all that much more as he now has a stake in the whole affair. Again, lesson learned.

Squawk! "Get to work boy, I'll be supervising this operation today."

"Good job, that's right, just dump the old straw on the ground. Hustle up now I've got eggs to lay."