Potatoes...!

Looks like i was a slight bit more pessimistic than necessary about those Adirondack potatoes...   yesterday i noticed a pair of sprouts:



i also found a chunk of potato that had been unearthed by the cats,  it had a sprout and some hairy roots on it.  I replanted it near the two above shoots.  This morning,  while doing some more planting and weeding,  i found a third potato plant just poking its way up.  This makes 3, maybe 4 plants.  I can live with that. 

We are expecting as many as 6 days of steady rain right now,  so this morning,  before the rain began, i managed to get the rest of the seeds in.  I had to skip out on the beets (beetroot) because i decided late spring might be too late and though i bought bolt-resistant types,  i just don't want that going on.

So...  what i planted was a row of Golden Butter wax bush beans,  a row of Royal Burgundy bush beans, a third of a row of the leftover bush bean seeds my dad gave me (Tender-long i think), a third of a row of  Minowase daikon radish and the rest was the ornamental sunflower mix (Fantasia).

I threw in a handful of Pinetree's radish mix into the further end of the potato row-  where the cats tore it up so bad...   i figure if the radish do grow they won't hurt the potatoes by the time they can be pulled.

Oh and the goji are getting full of berries:



Provider bush beans all up and weeded:


Full garden shot:



All planted.  Now all i have to do is keep up with the weeds, the bugs and hopefully i'll keep blights away!

Its been a while...

I just haven't had the time,  i guess.  Not so much busy,  but i need time to gather my thoughts before i can write things down.  I'm still not quite gathered,  but i have taken a number of photos and have uploaded them to Photobucket so i can post them here.  They uploaded a bit randomly,  so i'll sort through them and just describe as i go.

First up is one of three galls i found on my Stanley prune plum.


Here is a second one


the third was up too high to take a photo.

I went to Stark Brothers' facebook page and asked them for advice.  I don't know if these are fungal, bacterial or insect galls and i don't know what to do about them.  I have not gotten a reply yet,  a 48 hour wait is not unusual.
On the upside though,  it looks like i might get some fruit this year if all goes well:


The Autumn Olive bloomed profusely this year, a nice sweet scent


The lilacs bloomed nicely too...  they have gone by now.


The Sparkle strawberries are blooming too


I got the black plastic down and the tomatoes, squash, melons, eggplant, peppers, basil, shiso, tea hibiscus, cukes and broccoli planted last Tuesday.

I wasn't planning on  putting the broccoli on plastic,  it might button or bolt,  but we'll see.  Everything but the melons seem to be doing fine.  It took about 5 days before the striped cucumber beetles found my plants,  but when they did,  they went right after the melons.  I used sevin dust which is the only thing that i have found that works on them.

The uncovered second row has Provider bush beans in it,  they just started coming up about Monday.  I had planted them last Wednesday i think.  I planted them just before 2 days of rain so i didn't have to water or anything.
Golden Butter wax and Royal Burgundy bush beans will be going in later today or early tomorrow depending on when more rain is expected.  I also have about 25 seeds of  Tender Green bush beans my dad had left over from his small planting at their house.

I still have not planted any daikon radish or beets, or the ornamental sunflowers. I need to get the sunflowers in soon,  but i'm going to look around and see if the beets and daikon radish may be better as a fall crop at this point.

I don't think any of those Adirondack potatoes are coming up.  They were planted 3 weeks ago this Monday and i don't see one sprout.  This is a real bummer.  I think the combination of the seed potato pieces being so rotted and then the row they were planted in appears to be a favorite of the feral cats...  the whole row is torn up from their digging and rolling,  the 'taters never had a chance.   I'll try again next year and buy twice as much seed.  If they rot again, i will give up.

 As far as the plastic on the rows goes...   i have had some trouble with the plastic staying down in the wind.  I used ground staples,  but the garden soil is so soft they can only hold so well.  I'm also using bricks.  The ends are the hardest to keep down,  they have blown off a few times and i have had to re-set it.  This has damaged some leaves on a couple sweet pepper plants,  but not much else.

Looks like another good year for grapes:


Blueberries look good too:

 Two of them are doing great,  the other two that took it rough over the winter are recovering. One has a small cluster,  but the other has none.

I think that is all for now.

Garden prep

So,  we got the final tilling last weekend and through the end of last week and this weekend i started digging the rows.  Every year i dread this part.  Its almost as troublesome as weeding.  I always say i won't bother next year and instead of hilling up the planting beds i'll just let my feet trample down the walking rows.  Unfortunately its so much better for the plants,  but its so hard on my back.  This year seemed even harder.



I ended up making more rows than usual...  9 this year.  I didn't feel like going through the hassle of string marking everything so i tried something new.



I have a 3-wheeled cart for my youngest daughter.  Its the type that can be hitched to a bike.   I decided to use it to mark my lines.  The wheelbase is a little narrower than i prefer,  but it sure did save time.  I just walked it across, then dug between the tracks.

Now that i have reconfigured the rows entirely,  my original garden plan is kind of moot.  I'll be winging it again. lol



I'm glad i got it done though.  It rained last night and that would have made the soil extra heavy to dig,  so it had to be finished yesterday.

I laid some of the black plastic down.  I was hoping to do almost every row,  but i may have only enough plastic for 4 full rows and maybe half of another.


Its an experiment anyway.

Those Adirondack blue potatoes are quite striking. This is their actual color:
 

Unfortunately many of them have some rotten spots.  I'm not sure if this is annoying or really bad.  I hope the pieces grow instead of continuing to rot.

The apple tree bloomed this weekend:


And something is digging up our grass:


Hubby thinks maybe a skunk digging for grubs....  but there are puncture marks all over too...  it makes me wonder if its a bird?


Whatever it is, i hope it stops!

Blogging outdoors and pics of what is growing.

Its  a bit chilly out today but its been so nice i decided to take the laptop outside and try making my entry from the table in the driveway.  Its interesting how 65 degrees indoors on a winter day can feel so cold,  but 65 degrees outdoors in the spring feels balmy.  Unfortunately its the breeze that is bringing a bit of chill to the air and the sun is behind a bit of hazy clouds right now.  But that should be clearing up soon.  Its supposed to reach the high 60's today and Thursday is expected to be in the 70's.   Sounds fine to me!

So far nothing iss flowering of course,  but leaves are popping out all over.  I managed to get the fruit trees sprayed yesterday and my dad delivered me a new trailer load of well-rotted horse manure. The garden badly needed some fresh poop.  My soil is rather sandy and the organic matter from the other year has broken completely down,  so we needed some fluffy richness.

Here is one of the goji plants setting out some nice healthy leaves


This is the male seabuckthorn


And the female


One of the beach plums waking up


One of the cherries


Blueberry and lingonberry


A not-so-good photo of Stanley's leaf buds


Autumn olive



The other cherry


The elderberries


The grapes are still sleeping.  If i remember correctly,  they don't begin to leaf out until the apple is about to bloom.


Speaking of the apple...


Hubby, spreading out the manure for me.


We still have piles of garden rubbish that needs to be burned,   but we have not had rain for quite a while so its been too dry to safely burn anything.   No rain in the forecast either for the next week or so.  If we don't get rain we will probably have to cart off the stuff and let it break down in a pile somewhere.

I may start bring out the brassica seedlings to begin hardening them off today or tomorrow.  I need to get the sunflowers started and i'm a bit late on trying to get some herbs started.  I had a number of things that didn't germinate quite the numbers i had hoped for,  so i may have some gaps to fill.

I'm hoping my dad will be able to come by this weekend and till the soil,  i'm hoping for two tills before planting.  This should disrupt many of the weeds and get the warmth deeper into the soil.  It may not matter in the end because we are going to try using black plastic in the rows this year to block out all those confounded weeds.  But i won't be able to use it on the bush bean rows or the potatoes,  so its best to do what we can to keep the weeds in check.

Speaking of potatoes,  my Adirondack blues came in last Thursday.  My daughter is happy with the skin color of them.  We won't get a look inside until its time to chunk them up to plant,  but i bet they will look pretty cool.   I have grown a few blue potatoes before...  i think they were All Blues,  i got a small box of them from Walmart one year,  enough for just a little plot in one of my little gardens many years back.

I ordered 10 Sparkle strawberry plants that should be arriving soon,  they didn't come today.  I was going to put them in a container,  but i'm not sure which one i might use.  I almost hope they are out of stock and i'll get a refund or credit,  because i ran out of options.  I used to have a round, white pot by the front door.  Its been here since before we bought the house 10 years ago.  It finally developed a big crack in the side so it was time to go.  I'm replacing it with my big terracotta-looking pot that is about 3'x12".


  I was going to put the strawberries in there,  but i kind of want flowers in there since its going to be in the front...  i was thinking the nasturtiums would look nice. But then,  i want strawberries and since i don't really have many purely decorative flowering plants anymore a big pot of strawberries won't be out of place with my landscaping.  So, we'll see.  If the strawberries are out of stock (they were in stock when i ordered,  but the next day they were listed as sold out,  and i'm pretty sure Pinetree is good at updating their stock accurately-  but this time of year things run out fast and they are very busy so things might slip through.)  I did just look across the yard and remembered this:

Maybe that will be the place for the "nasties".

The goji seeds i planted for my mom have come up nicely,  one is really big and the others look fine.  The schizandra are not doing anything noticeable yet.

*Sigh*  I just can't wait to plant the garden and enjoy a warm summer.

Last of the seed orders.

The Cherokee Purple and Green Shiso seeds arrived today.  If i can continue reigning myself in,  this is all the seeds for the year.  The only thing left to arrive will be the Adirondack Blue potato starts that should come in the Spring.

The seeds from the eBay seller look good,  nice and clean seeds, little to no chaff, plenty of them too.

Its been too chaotic so far today to get those pots i set out filled,  so no starting seeds yet.  A few days delay won't hurt since i am on the cusp of the starting dates.

I hope to get it started and completed this weekend at least.

We also got the weather station figured out.  Hubby went out and got a second one from Mardens so we could both have receivers.  It ended up costing us about $9 for the two sets because we had a gift card.
The station shows wind speed, direction, humidity, barometric pressure, indoor and outdoor temps,   forecast icon and calculates windchill.
Its nice to have this information at a glance.