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Showing posts with the label potatoes

Vegetable Plantings for 2024 - Container and Tower - June 2024

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When I think back on my gardening journey, I really started as a vegetable gardener.  Tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, herbs and more.  When we moved, I really leaned AWAY from vegetables and into perennials and foliage.  Why?  Shade vs. Sun.  Our old garden had ALL Sun.  Our new one has almost ALL Shade.   But, I began to solve that by building a patio vegetable garden set-up over the years.  First, with a raised planter box.  Then last year, with a Greenstalk tower. #19 on my 2024 to-do list is to 'do more with vegetables' .   How am I going about doing that?  By planting a couple of bush tomatoes and some other things. First the tomatoes.  I've mostly settled on ONLY planting bush tomato plants.   This year, I bought one at the Morton Sale - Tiny Tim Cherry.  I also picked up two others at the big box store: Little Napoli - which is a roma in bush form (kinda neat) and Little Bing - also a cherry.  Below is a look at the three in the raised box: I normally grow basil an

2018 Potato Harvest - Container Growing

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Back in June of this year, I planted two different fingerling varieties of potatoes in containers and placed those out back in an area of full sun.  They bloomed with flowers later in the Summer and most recently I noticed that all of the growth had died back.  That meant it was time to harvest.  I pulled the five big containers all the way to the back of our yard (where we keep most of our garden waste) and with the help of the Bird we sifted through the dirt and came away with a bagful of spuds in varying shapes and sizes.  I've harvested potatoes over the years and posted the pics on the blog.  Here's a 'partial' harvest from 2016 of fingerling potatoes .  And here's a huge harvest of potatoes back in 2013 .  We brought this year's haul inside the house, put them in a paper bag and didn't bother cleaning them.  Everything we read on the Web says to not wash the potatoes until right before we're set to use them, so they're a little dirty,

Potato Blossoms - Blooming July 2018

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Back in June of this year, I posted about the two fingerling varieties of potatoes that I planted in containers .  I've kept them in one of the most full-sun spots in our backyard, right outside of our kitchen windows.  And they shot up.  I 'hill'd them up' as best as I could, but pretty soon, I ran out of container height.  (Lesson learned...plant them in super tall containers and plant them low, so they can get 'hill'd up' quite a bit. This week, I saw these flower blooms emerging and thought that they're quite striking.  In fact, that's the exact phrase I used in my Instagram post from earlier this week.  Striking. (on yeah... that's my gardening-focused Insta handle.   That, much like this blog, is intended as a diary of sorts.) Potato blossoms. We're growing fingerlings in containers this season. The blooms are quite striking. A post shared by Hornbeam Hill (@hornbeamhill) on Jul 2, 2018 at 7:16am PDT I posted

Two Fingerling Potato Varieties Planted - 2018

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This year, I planted two different varieties of fingerling potatoes in containers - the Magic Molly I (above) and Pinto Gold I (below).  These are very similar to the two that I planted back in 2016 .  Last year, with the move and all, I didn't plant any spuds.  I chose to put these into a series of containers because we don't have a garden set up yet.    I took the seed potatoes, cut them up into segments with at least one eye each, then after waiting for the cuts to heal/dry, I planted them in some larger containers that our shrubs/trees had come in.  Fast forward to today and look at the growth coming out of the top of the soil.  I planted these low and kept the soil level down because I wanted to 'hill up' new soil on top of this growth .  These are the purple Magic Molly's based on their purplish foliage.  On top of this new growth, I added a few inches of top soil.  Then, when they grow more, I'll add a little more until I reach the top of th

Partial Fingerling Potato Harvest - 2016

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Back in May, we planted two varieties of fingerling potatoes:   Magic Molly (the purple ones) and French .  I showed some of the very pretty flowers that the tubers threw off this year here .  Each of the girls took one of the varieties and we worked together to get them planted.  We cut the seed potatoes into segments and because we're not in our own house, we decided to plant them in containers on the driveway.   Well...mostly in containers. The Babe also planted some of hers in my sister's raised beds.  We didn't harvest those, but we did, indeed, harvest the ones in the containers/bags on the driveway.  That's what you see in the photo above:  our partial harvest.  There's a bit more than 50 total spuds of different sizes now sitting in this bucket in our cellar basement awaiting their time in the oven this coming week.    The harvest is A LOT smaller than the one I last had in 2013 .  Next year, we'll hopefully be in a position to install some of ou

Potato Tuber Flowers

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We've grown potatoes over the years, but I don't recall any of them blooming like the ones we are growing this year where they have big, white flowers.  I believe that these flowers are coming off just one of the two varieties - the purple ones called Magic Mollies - that we planted this year.   See this post to see them both . The girls are excited to see the tubers throw up their shoots and now flower and The Babe learned all about the structure of flowers in Kindergarten, so she was happily pointing out the stamen and such to me all last night.  

Two Fingerling Potato Varieties For 2016

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Over the weekend, me and the two girls cut up the seed potatoes that came in these two sacks:  Magic Molly I's and French Fingerling I's.  They were the two most striking varieties that Menards carries and the Magic Molly ones are particularly beautiful.  In cutting up the seed potatoes, the purple almost bled off the knife.  We're going to plant these in these new-fangled 'tubs' that Nat bought me for my birthday from Gardener's Supply earlier in April.  They're driveway-dwelling containers that are easy to move.  I don't want to crowd them out, so we might just put a few seed potatoes in each one and put the rest in my sister's garden raised beds. The last time I posted about potatoes was back in 2013 , so I'm thinking that might have been the last time we had a harvest?  I *think* I planted them last year, but we moved out before they could come in. These fingerlings won't produce as heavily as the varieties that I've planted in

Potatoes Are In - 2013

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I filled up 2 five gallon buckets worth of red, white, and sweet potatoes this week as I turned over the soil in the potato beds.  I planted 3 pounds of seed potatoes and after giving dozens of spuds away to my family and neighbors, I ended up with more than a full 5 gallon bucket for ourselves. This was last year's harvest . Anyone want some potatoes? Come on by.  I have them out in the garage staying cool.  Would love to share them with you!

Yukon Gold Seed Potatoes Planted

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This morning, I put in the Yukon Gold Seed potatoes in the ground (those are the ones on the left).  I had five pounds of them and the bag says that we could end up with a yield of up to 50 pounds. Based on my past experience, we won't get up to 50 pounds, but we *will* get some potatoes.  From the looks of things on the web, this variety is pretty versatile.  You can steam/fry/grill/roast them.  Heck, Mrs. Martha even makes fries out of them . 90 days from now (Sept 1st) or there about, we'll be able to harvest them.

New Potato Harvest

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On Tuesday night, I had a long list of tasks to get done outside.  Cut the lawn.  Re-stake my tomato cages.  Then...time for pest removal/reduction.  After I took care of a hornets nest I finally got busy tending to my garden.  With the temperatures lower than they have been in the past 10 days, last night was a good night to catch up on some neglect.  And I was greeted with some good news: A partial harvest came in last night from my New Potato plants.  The plants are starting to die back, so I began digging.  Here's what I turned up a nice amount of spuds.  I'd say that this is likely going to be about 1/5th of the total harvest based on the area I dug up.  About 10 potatoes that look like this of various sizes: Some of them are really quite big, too.  Here's one next to a champagne cork to demonstrate the size: I know next year I'll be doing A LOT more potatoes earlier in the spring.  I'll have to find some Fingerling seed potatoes on the web somewhere.