Some sunshine, please!
Rain and Potatoes
I think we may finally be ending the 40 days and 40 nights of cold, rain and just plain awful weather for the garden. Some of the plants have struggled through this ordeal, particularly my wife's sunflowers and my tomato plants. I had to go out yesterday during what seemed like mid April weather and re-tie many of the tomato plants that were not in the cages. Many were bent over and sad from all the wind and rain. Better tying earlier would have helped. There wasn't much I could do for the sunflowers, except hope that they will stand back up when the sun starts shining again.
According to weather historians here in the Boston area, we are coming close to being the least sunny month of June since 1903. Seems like we are more like the Northwest then the Northeast.
Today I was able to go out into the garden and get some Yukon Gold potatoes. The first of the season. To say I was surprised is an understatement. The photo shows what my first plant was able to produce in about 2 months. I planted some Yukon Gold whole potatoes that I bought from Wal-mart, no less. I could not find any of these locallly (I usually buy them from Agway, but they were not available yet), and Wal-mart had a few bags of Norland Reds and Yukon Gold, so I bought 5lbs of each.
I followed Bob Th
ompson's suggestion of planting the seed potato whole instead of cutting them up in quarters. When the seed potatoes are cut up I am supposed to let them rest (cure) for a day or two and then plant them. This new way just required putting them into the ground and letting them grow.
Since I had a 5 lb package to use, I thought I would try Bob's approach. The photo on the left shows the single seed potato I used.
So, from one "seed" potato, my plant generated about 5 lbs of potatoes in about a period of 2 months. Not a bad return on a simple investment.
Hang On, Tomatoes
I am keeping my fingers crossed that the tomatoes will come back and start turning red in the near future. We are finally supposed to get some real summer weather beginning on Thursday. Fortunately, we will not get some of the high temperatures that are taking place in the middle of the country. I saw where Chicago is up in the mid 90's and Minneapolis-St. Paul was close to 100. The nice thing with New England is that we don't get too cold or too hot.
Here are a couple of photos of my tomato plants. Fortunately, the plants in the cages have done well, so I am thinking I will be getting more fencing for tomato cages next year.
Tomorrow I will go back out and do some weeding, tying up more tomatoes, and planting cukes where I just finished taking out the last of my spring peas. Actually, the pea area will have both cukes and bush green beans (Blue Lake). I have found that growing more than 4-5 cucumber plants results in having too many cukes and having me spend a lot of hours canning them for future use. In past years I have had "Senf" gerken (sweet cucumbers) in canned jars that have spent 2-3 years down in the basement instead of being eaten. So, fewer cukes this year...
I think we may finally be ending the 40 days and 40 nights of cold, rain and just plain awful weather for the garden. Some of the plants have struggled through this ordeal, particularly my wife's sunflowers and my tomato plants. I had to go out yesterday during what seemed like mid April weather and re-tie many of the tomato plants that were not in the cages. Many were bent over and sad from all the wind and rain. Better tying earlier would have helped. There wasn't much I could do for the sunflowers, except hope that they will stand back up when the sun starts shining again.
According to weather historians here in the Boston area, we are coming close to being the least sunny month of June since 1903. Seems like we are more like the Northwest then the Northeast.
Today I was able to go out into the garden and get some Yukon Gold potatoes. The first of the season. To say I was surprised is an understatement. The photo shows what my first plant was able to produce in about 2 months. I planted some Yukon Gold whole potatoes that I bought from Wal-mart, no less. I could not find any of these locallly (I usually buy them from Agway, but they were not available yet), and Wal-mart had a few bags of Norland Reds and Yukon Gold, so I bought 5lbs of each.
I followed Bob Th
ompson's suggestion of planting the seed potato whole instead of cutting them up in quarters. When the seed potatoes are cut up I am supposed to let them rest (cure) for a day or two and then plant them. This new way just required putting them into the ground and letting them grow.Since I had a 5 lb package to use, I thought I would try Bob's approach. The photo on the left shows the single seed potato I used.
So, from one "seed" potato, my plant generated about 5 lbs of potatoes in about a period of 2 months. Not a bad return on a simple investment.
Hang On, Tomatoes
I am keeping my fingers crossed that the tomatoes will come back and start turning red in the near future. We are finally supposed to get some real summer weather beginning on Thursday. Fortunately, we will not get some of the high temperatures that are taking place in the middle of the country. I saw where Chicago is up in the mid 90's and Minneapolis-St. Paul was close to 100. The nice thing with New England is that we don't get too cold or too hot.
Here are a couple of photos of my tomato plants. Fortunately, the plants in the cages have done well, so I am thinking I will be getting more fencing for tomato cages next year.
Tomorrow I will go back out and do some weeding, tying up more tomatoes, and planting cukes where I just finished taking out the last of my spring peas. Actually, the pea area will have both cukes and bush green beans (Blue Lake). I have found that growing more than 4-5 cucumber plants results in having too many cukes and having me spend a lot of hours canning them for future use. In past years I have had "Senf" gerken (sweet cucumbers) in canned jars that have spent 2-3 years down in the basement instead of being eaten. So, fewer cukes this year...
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