It's been an exciting first growing season for me. Autumn has arrived (actually it arrived 2 weeks ago with the first frost about early October) and some frost tender plants perished .... but many actually survived it quite well. I attribute this mostly to germinating the seeds outdoors and the cover they get from the cold North (west) Wind.
Harvested the pot of potatoes last week. Started out with a sad looking, wrinkly, sprouting potato that has been languishing ignored in the roots bin. Started by covering the bottom of a gallon sized pot with 2 inches of soil, putting the wrinkly thing on it and covering it with 2 inches of soil. As soon as green leaves started to push out of the surface of the soil, more soil is piled on top. Repeat until you have about an inch of pot left (so you can water it without spilling soil and water everywhere!). Let it grow in a relatively sunny place (I just left it on the deck, it gets about 5 hours direct sunlight) and water it when the pot feels light. That way you won't over-water it. Potato roots and tubers hate wet feet - they'll rot if you water them too much. Harvest when the greenery starts to fade (or earlier, if you like new potatoes).
From a single wrinkly, I harvested about 700g of fresh tasty potatoes :) definitely will grow more potatoes (in bigger container!) next year.
What about the other plants? Well, Cocot the Sunflower bloomed and grew other heads too! He survived several hard frost.... until last week - a bit much for his delicate constitution. More Red Sun next year, too!
The main plants are still alive... will be eating the leaves as well. The beets were a bit of a fail (no photos :p) should have started them earlier, and in a bigger container with sandier soil. Got a tiny marble sized beet (tastes wonderful though) but that's fine. It was an experimental grow anyway!
Half of the English Munstead lavender were planted in the main flower bed to overwinter. The other half will be spoiled rotten being taken indoors to overwinter. The succulent pots have made their move inside, too.
Definitely more poppies next year, especially because we got some really nice mutants:
Harvested the pot of potatoes last week. Started out with a sad looking, wrinkly, sprouting potato that has been languishing ignored in the roots bin. Started by covering the bottom of a gallon sized pot with 2 inches of soil, putting the wrinkly thing on it and covering it with 2 inches of soil. As soon as green leaves started to push out of the surface of the soil, more soil is piled on top. Repeat until you have about an inch of pot left (so you can water it without spilling soil and water everywhere!). Let it grow in a relatively sunny place (I just left it on the deck, it gets about 5 hours direct sunlight) and water it when the pot feels light. That way you won't over-water it. Potato roots and tubers hate wet feet - they'll rot if you water them too much. Harvest when the greenery starts to fade (or earlier, if you like new potatoes).
From a single wrinkly, I harvested about 700g of fresh tasty potatoes :) definitely will grow more potatoes (in bigger container!) next year.
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| Nothing beats the taste of freshly dug, home grown potatoes! |
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| Opening his eye for the first time ... |
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| Three days later |
Ate the fractal broccoli as well yesterday. Should have taken a photo of the flowerhead ... but here's an old photo of what it looked like several weeks earlier.
The main plants are still alive... will be eating the leaves as well. The beets were a bit of a fail (no photos :p) should have started them earlier, and in a bigger container with sandier soil. Got a tiny marble sized beet (tastes wonderful though) but that's fine. It was an experimental grow anyway!
Half of the English Munstead lavender were planted in the main flower bed to overwinter. The other half will be spoiled rotten being taken indoors to overwinter. The succulent pots have made their move inside, too.
Definitely more poppies next year, especially because we got some really nice mutants:
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