POTATOES!!!

So...I missed a couple of days last week. My brother-in-law got married this weekend and the preparations took up a lot of time. The nice part about a kitchen garden...if properly planted, it doesn't mind a few days of neglect.

On Sunday, I did take the time to lift a few potatoes. A while back, I posted on a way to plant potatoes in small spaces. I actually conducted a small experiment this year. I planted two identical sized spaces but one was planted in the 'traditional' sense - put seed in ground and water - while the other was planted intensively - put seed in ground, water, add more dirt to cover almost all of leaves, water more, add more dirt to cover as plant grows, and so on until the plant is buried in about 36 inches of dirt.

Yesterday, I tested on of the the 'traditional' plants and this is what I got:


That ought to make a nice meal!!

8 potatoes from 1 plant means that I ought to get some nice fall and winter meals. Especially because the intensively planted potatoes should produce 2 to 3 times as much!!

We will have to be careful of this one, though:

Can you see the green tint? That means that I wasn't careful and that the side of the potato was exposed to the sun for a while. Don't want to eat that - when sunlight hits potatoes, an alkaline substance forms that makes people sick.

I also wanted to mention the fall salad greens that I seeded 2 weeks ago - here it is now:

On the right is a little mezclun. On the right, some starting head lettuce. In between is some arugula and some spinach. Should be ready for some tasty salad in a few weeks.

More to come on the potatoes soon...