Free Potatoes

 

Last winter, a few potatoes in the bag were growing sprouts, so I thought, "Hey, why not throw these in the garden and see what they do". Not only are potatoes relatively easy to grow, but they help to clear the ground of weeds; however, my main though was simply filling some empty space, adding a little crop rotation, and seeing how well they would do in this climate.

At the start of May, the haulms (stems) were looking limp and fallen over, so I thought I'd have a look and see how the potatoes were doing underneath. Imagine my surprise when I found about 5 decent spuds under each one. Thats a 500% return in about 5 months - not bad.

Of course potatoes are cheap in the grocery store, which is why I never really bothered with them until now, but there are several advantages of growing them yourself; 

First, when I buy potatoes in the grocery store, I usually eat more than I want to simply because I dont want to waste them before they go green/bad/sprout. Even then, I usually end up throwing out the last few. Having them in the garden means I can harvest just as many as I need, leaving the rest in the ground for later, so there is no waste. 

Second, the potatoes I harvest are new potatoes, which you cant get in the stores here, other than perhaps as a specialty item, for which you pay through the nose.

So for those in the Almaden Valley and similar climates near here, I'd recommend growing potatoes as follows:

(1) In Winter - anytime in November, December, January, February - if you find any potatoes sprouting in your store-bought bag, simply dig a hole in the garden, about 4-6 inches deep, and throw the potato into it and re-cover. 

(2) If you have compost (not fancy stuff, just stuff from the compost pile that is reasonably rotted), throw over the surface when you are done. This is just a convenient time to be adding compost anyway, because you're not meddling too much with plants on the surface in winter.

(3) Plant more potatoes as they become available, until you have one for every 2-person meal you're likely to want, each about a foot away from the other. Allow about a foot and a half on either side as the stems will probably fall on top of anything growing there.

(4) If you want, you can plant other winter crops in between while the potatoes get going; you should be able to get a crop of lettuce in, for example, before the potatoes smother them.

(5) Harvest from the end of April onwards, as needed in the kitchen. Remember to throw the stems on the compost pile.

(6) As long as you dont grow too many and keep growing them in the same location, year after year, you probably shouldnt get too many diseases/pests showing up. It also helps to interplant with other crops. I had some spring onions, lettuce and parsley mixed in with mine (and the bed is bounded by herbs like lemon balm and oregano).

For 5 minutes work and kitchen waste, you get a meal for 2 of great-tasting potatoes.

Potatoes should also grow well in an old compost pile if you want to let it rot down a little longer or in buckets filled with just-finished compost; they are fairly greedy feeders, so they can handle younger compost than other plants, probably.

In terms of garden management, potatoes work well with compost and/or manure in starting off the crop rotation cycle, in improving the condition of the soil. By growing them in winter, there shouldnt be too many problems in water requirements either.

Catching up

Alas, I've been very slack in writing this blog last year, so here is a quick summary of last years highlights; First, I largely abandoned the ground gardening last year, simply because it takes so much water, I never do enough watering, and so the plants never do that well; also, all the beds are part-shaded. Of course its hard for me to waste ground, so I did put some stuff in here and there anyway, but I focused most of my gardening into bucket gardening. These buckets were filled with a mix of composts, soil, including the home-made compost from the previous winter. The best part; I get to move the buckets into the middle of the lawn (pretty much bare earth in summer here) so they get lots of light, and I even get to move them around to catch the sun if needed. Each bucket got punched with a nail several times so they drained, and then were planted. Most buckets last year got one or another tomato variety, and most did well, although there was an issue with a garden rat picking off all the early tomatoes until I filled the bite marks with ghost chili sauce. After trying to pick around the sauce for a while, eventually the rat gave up. It also helped that I found where he hid out during the day and hosed the place out. But all told, the rat probably got about 30 tomatoes or more. Possibly he was using the tomatoes as a water source, so one of my strategies was to leave a water source in a corner of the garden so he had a choice. I also noticed that he ate into my recycling plastic bottles, again looking for water. I really dont mind pests taking a little here and there, but when I lose almost every tomato for a few weeks after months of caring for them, it gets a bit much. Into the buckets also went basil, lettuce, eggplants and cucumber; these had very few problems; rats apparently dont like cucumbers, possibly because the leaves are rough and hairy. The crop wasnt massive (I only had 2 plants), but it gave a good enough show, so I'll definitely be growing some again this year, maybe different varieties. Last year I got cucumbers that were more like dill pickles. The one problem that these shared with the eggplants was that both tended to be bitter, so some were OK, others not. It turns out that the standard "black beauty" eggplant has to be picked quite young and gets bitter very quickly. Now that I've worked out eggplant growing - in containers in full sun - its time to try other varieties and see if I can find some that are inclined to be less bitter. The Zucchini crop this year wasnt great, at least in part because I wasnt growing so much in the ground; the ones in the buckets didnt produce as much, and there were fewer plants than last year. I guess this year I need to go back to growing zucchini in the ground; the ground continues to get better with all the compost thats going in, together with the occasional buried fish guts and whatnot. The topsy-turvy tomato containers were as good this year as usual (and safe from the rat), but once again I've lost a couple of containers because they really rot quickly (despite their claims to be reusable for many years). I've got other hanging containers this years, right-side up ones, but I dont suppose that will make much of a difference as the plants will tumble over the edge. The grapevine did very well last year, with about 30 bunches of grapes; I thinned these out a lot, by about half, then harvested the others fairly early to make about a liter of white wine, which so far smells a little yeasty, but I'm hoping this will go away in time. I'm hoping that this harvest didnt damage the vine, because they warn against taking early crops, but the vine was quite big, and I harvested early, so there should have been a lot of nutrients going back to the roots. It's also got a lot of soil to itself. I pruned the vine back around new years, cutting most of the side growths off, and knocking some of the leaders back. Cleaned out the pomegranate a little at the same time. Next post, I'll discuss how the winter crops are doing.

Fava Bean in Flower

First flowers appearing on the Fava beans, on the first sowing made back in Mid-October.



The Kale/Fava/Pea bed looks nice against the Autumn leaves.



This is an experiment in times to plant Favas and Kale (Kale should have been sown earlier, I think; I have only started any reasonable harvesting since Christmas (2 meals), and its still small. We'll see how the Favas go, but the fact that they have flowers is positive. Lets hope there are some bees hanging around, or hummingbirds. This year we havent had much rain yet, I'm watering the crops. The nights are fairly cold, bundle-up weather, but it could be mistaken for spring. I suppose I really should be recording temperatures to do a real experiment.

Its also an experiment in interplanting Favas (provide nitrogen), Kale (use nitrogen, and may help hold up the Favas, and Peas (add support AND provide nitrogen). The idea was supposed to be that the Favas would take over once the Kale was pretty much over, but I think for that, the Kale needs to be planted earlier.

Sprouts

Sprouts still moving along, still mostly about a foot high in general. At this point, it looks like they wont be gracing my christmas table. The Cos Lettuce is likewise not really bulking up that much, so I'll probably start harvesting mid-sized lettuces. I guess with Cos, one is enough for a meal anyway.
The French Breakfast radishes grew thick enough, but still without lenghtening. I'm not sure what it takes to grow longer roots, but clearly planting in a bucket of compost isnt enough.
The Parsley is looking good, already big enough for a leaf here and there. This really makes a good winter crop; its a great green for soups. Last year I often ate ramen noodles with a few parsley leaves thrown in as vegetable.
The beets are still at the 2-leaf stage, but the white turnips are starting to look like radishes, at least in terms of the tops.
The Swiss Chard got knocked by that leaf miner again, but the new leaves look clean so far. I'm hoping the cold weather keeps all these pests down. Similarly, the aphids on the Brussels Sprouts and the caterpillars on the Kale and Sprouts are appearing more infrequently.
The Kale at this point is about a foot high, and I have been doing some very light harvesting of lower leaves. Its looking like Kale is a successful crop here to add to my list. Finally, the Fava Beans are pretty large plants now, most are a foot high or more. I'll continue to plant more to find out whether planting them earlier helps their crop or not.

Gulf Fritillary

Unfortunately no photo from me for this (the above is from Wikipedia, but was taken in Berkeley), but I spotted a Gulf Fritillary today. Not something I have seen before, and the Bay Area is on the edge of its range.

From Wikipedia:
The Gulf Fritillary is commonly seen in parks and gardens, as well as in open country. Its range extends from Argentina through Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean to the southern United States, as far north as the San Francisco Bay Area on the west coast. It is occasionally found farther north in the US.

Shogoin Turnip

Tried some Shogoin Turnips today, planted seeds in a bucket left over from the Tomatoes topped up with fresh commercial compost. Lets see how they do over the winter. They are supposed to mature in 45 days, which would be mid-december, but I'm not holding my breath. This is going to be a small crop - even at 2-inch spacing, a bucket wont hold much - but it should be a test of how these things grow at this time of year.

Speaking of which, over the past few days, we have dropped down to cooler temperatures again, from the low 80's to the mid 70's during the day, and cold enough at nights to close all the windows and put a jumper on. Its also been getting darker; I'm switching the lights on inside about 6 pm now, summer time.

I notice the first sowing of Fava Beans has had pretty much 100% germination between the Kale plants, and are now about 3 inches high. The Kale itself is about 6 inches with about 6 medium-sized leaves on each plant - nowhere near harvesting yet, but well-established young plants.

I have noticed a plant disappearing here and there, a Kale or a Lettuce, so I reluctantly hauled out the old metaldehyde. I dont like using poisons, but slugs destroy plants - they dont just nibble. My entire sowing of a lettuce mix by the grape vine, about 12 square feet, has nothing now, just some Nigella, a garlic sprout here or there, and one or two adventurous weeds. Like the sowing of Lettuce, Radish and Carrot where the Leeks are now, I suspect that baby slugs just took out one seedling after another. I have no problem growing from seed in pots, but nothing survives at that stage in the ground. You see a few germinating seeds, then POW! Nothing left. So chemicals it is.

The Cos Lettuce continue to do well, so last week I sowed another few in small pots to replace these ones when the are harvested. Finally, I noticed some bumps appearing in the joints of one of the brussels sprouts, so it looks like these are going to start developing over the next few weeks. The plants are still 6 inches to a foot high, depending on the sowing, but there is a noticeable thickening of the stems to about thumb size.

October plantings

The Brussels Sprouts are doing quite well now, actually looking like plants, rather than seedlings or plantlets. It has been now since seeding (mid-July), and the stems are starting to thicken a little and lengthen. The weather is quite good, being not too hot, no too cold (70-80°F), and a little light rain here and there (nothing much, so I have to water, but it has evenly dampened the previously baked soil). I'm quite happy that a decent amount of growth has taken place by now, before the cold weather starts.

The leeks were finally put in about a week ago, and are starting to put on some growth. It's about time, because like last year, they have done almost nothing until now. Its as if they wait for replanting to get going, whether thats from soil (last year) or a pot (like this year). Maybe next year I will try seeding earlier in a bucket. In the picture, you can also see some of the Parris Island Cos; that, along with the Kale and Swiss Chard from the same sowing (early September), has all now been planted out, and is looking established, although still small. The space for the leeks was that ealier used for lettuce/carrots/radishes, none of which really did much more than throw up 2 or 3 seedlings.

The Kale you see here was sown earlier, pricked out into small pots, and has finally been planted out. I have planted some Fava Bean seeds and peas among the Kale, with the idea that these can provide nitrogen to the Kale, and take over in early spring when the Kale has all been harvested. I think the Favas are supposed to have deep roots, so they may not interfere with each other that much. Another experiment.