Random

So I'm a little behind on getting photos up, so I thought Sunday would be a good day to put up random photos.

The potatoes are still taking off like rockets! You can see a hint of purple in the leaves. I wonder if the flowers will be purple too.Our Ruby Chard is so pretty! That color is amazing - especially when the sun hits it in the evening.
J is wicked excited about all the peas on our plants.
And the passionfruit has been put outside and really seems to love the sun. The leaves got a lot darker.
And two weekends ago, we undertook our first adventure in canning - strawberry jam. It turned out pretty well, but I don't have many photos. Since it was our first time trying, it was mostly us running around and reading the instructions and making sure the jam didn't boil over (note to self: use a bigger pot next time).


Now we've got a boatload of strawberry jam. So if you're friends or family let us know if you want some and we'll mail it out!

Potatoes

When I first started out with the container garden, J was very upset that potatoes did not seem to be in his future. As a good midwestern boy, he loves him some potatoes and since moving to Boston and discovering Russo's, he's made it his mission to try every variety under the sun - and there are LOTS.

So you can imagine how excited he was when I read Stuckey and McGee's book and found a way to grow potatoes! Then again, that raised the problem of which type.

But he eventually settled on All Blues, and we placed the order and waited. In April we received a small paper bag of starter potatoes. We followed directions and put them in an egg carton and sprayed with a mix of water and liquid seaweed and let them sit.

When they sprouted long eyes we got out the trash can... Essentially this method consists of planting your seed potatoes near the bottom of the can and then filling it up over the plants as they grow. Since the potatoes aren't actually the roots, they're tubers, they grow off of shoots off the stem so you want to cover as much stem as possible to get more potatoes.


So far it's going really well! Our potatoes have really taken off - I had no idea they would grow so fast. It seems like every 4 days or so we have to go out and add more soil to the can. The photo below is a bit old, but as of today they're above the rim of the can. I'm not sure how much more soil we can add!
Can't wait for delicious potatoes from our own garden! And the plants are so pretty. I hope the flowers will be too.

Potatoes

My starter potatoes finally arrived, so I'm pre-sprouting them before planting in my trash can. Yes, you read that correctly.

J is the big potato fan in our house, so he got to choose the type. Harder than it sounds - there's so many! Since we're low on space, we can only grow one kind so J decided to automatically eliminate the kinds you can buy for pennies at the grocery store. He wanted something unique and delicious, so he finally settled on the blue kind from Pinetree Garden Seeds. I chose to buy from there because it's fairly local (Maine) and was recommended by another blogger.


My favorite gardening book suggests pre-sprouting by putting each seed potato in its own section of the egg carton, spraying with liquid seaweed and letting them go in a sunny area. So we'll see how it works!
Do you pre-sprout potatoes? What kind(s) are you growing this year?