Spring Cleaning

My garden spring cleaning started with the herb garden this year. I've been a bit behind with re-mulching in there, which meant that some of the broadleaf weeds have been creeping in.

I'll be getting some new herbs in a few weeks so it's time to get things back into shape. First up, weeding. And while I tried to be careful I did knock the remnants of the pineapple stage in the corner. Turned out to be a good thing - I discovered the plant was completely dead and the roots rotted. Why is that a good thing? Because while I liked that plant the first year it took over the whole place and shaded out some of my favorites. The second year it came back but lacked the vigor, however it still shaded out some of the others. Now I don't feel so guilty about ripping it out.

Ah, much better. I also pruned back the bee balm in the upper right and the sage just beyond the left edge of the photo.

And now for the final step in the process, re-mulching. The horses got a little wasteful with their hay over the holidays, spilling it on the ground and then using it as a sort of equine litter box. It doesn't spread well in the pasture like that but it makes excellent mulch.

And the herbs don't seem to mind the healthy dose of nitrogen and and organic matter that is mixed in with the hay.

Now to find some new things at the garden center.

Seasons are a-changin'

Got back from a week on the road and realized it was finally time to dig up the potatoes and put in tomatoes.

This is the first time I'm putting tomatoes in the wooden raised bed nearest the house. This is the same bed that is usually shaded most of the winter, so it's taken a little creativity to keep it productive. Earlier this year I planted potatoes in it to help with loosening up the soil. Hilling the potatoes with new garden dirt helped raised the soil level.

The whole process goes really quick. First I cut out all of the broccoli plants that were running down the length of the bed. They pretty much shaded out half of it. The potato vines have been slowly dying off, which meant it was time to dig.

You need to dig Adirondack Blues in good light, because those purple skins can get lost in the dark soil.

After the potatoes were out I continued spading and turning the rest of the bed.

Then it's time to rake the bed smooth and plot out the tomato plants.

I prefer to really loosen up the soil before planting tomatoes because they need deep holes. Remember, when planting tomatoes you want to bury half the plant. It helps develop a stronger root system.

 Repeat five more times.

Tomatoes are in. Still need to give them a good soak tonight. The little dams around each plant will help keep the water where it needs to go.

The next step will be to lay down the soaker hose and put in the tomato cages, but that's for another day.

Potato Turnover

Potato digging time! A little later than last year, but then again there was a good bit of rain last week that hopefully helped plump up the tubers.

This spring I planted two different varieties. I planted Yukon Golds again, with potatoes from last year's crop that had sprouted in storage. I also tried a new variety called "Adirondack Blue."

Adirondack Blue

Yukon Gold

This year I also waited a little longer to dig, waiting for the vines to die off more than in past years. I was hoping I would have larger, and more uniform, tubers. At this point about half of the leaves have died off.

Dying back

A quick reminder, potatoes need to be "hilled" about the time the flowers start appearing. This is because the tubers tend to form close to the surface, and exposure to light will make the potatoes turn green. I spent many a summer day hilling potatoes by hand with a hoe when I was growing up, and it's pretty easy when you can pull soil up from either side of the plant. In raised beds however I have to improvise - so I just dump a layer of soil mix around the base of the plants. It works for keeping the tubers green-free, but it makes for a mess when it comes time to dig. I need to be careful that I don't spill soil (too much) out of the bed and onto the mulched paths around the beds.

Digging carefully

Two other challenges with digging potatoes. First, I need to keep turning the soil several times to make sure I unearth all of the tubers. When I was digging for the Adirondacks I went through the row three times before I was confident I found everything. With the Yukons, the tubers tended to be on the periphery, so I was having to dig vertically along the boards and right up underneath the kale to make sure I found everything. I'm not ready to pull out the kale yet, which created the second challenge of digging close without disturbing those roots (much).

After digging I need to spread them out on the rubber floor mats in the barn aisle. This helps the residual dirt to dry and fall off and the skins to harden up a bit before storage. I grouped the taters by variety to compare the yield. Here's the results:

At the top are the Adirondack Blues, which are really more purple in color. The five foot row didn't yield much in terms of number, but the size of the tubers is more uniform.

The huge pile is the Yukon Golds. Lots of variation in size, but also a huge number. Not bad for a seven foot row.

And that little pile off to the upper right? Those are Dakota Pearls! I had planted Dakotas last fall in the same place I planted the Yukons this spring. Apparently I wasn't very good about sifting through all of the soil to find the little tubers because there were a few volunteers that came up this spring. They were easy to spot when I started digging because the vines were smaller and more upright, not as aged as the Yukon vines. When I dug up the Dakotas they were just as the name implies - very round and obviously white (though they look dirty/gray in the photo above).

Now, you are probably wondering of the Adirondacks are really purple all the way through. A quick peek inside (thanks to accidentally stabbing one with the garden spade) reveals the answer:

Speaking of accidental stabbing, here's tonight's dinner! Once the skin is broken the potatoes don't store well. They will be the first to be eaten.

Anyone else think Minions and Umpa Lumpas when they see these?

And yes, they retain their color through cooking!

FYI, my favorite prep on these is roast them in the oven with the skins on. Cut into bite-size pieces, toss in olive oil, add Kosher salt and black pepper to taste. Spread on a baking sheet in a single layer and bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, shaking the pan about half-way through to loosen.

Now, for the turnover part of this post. What am I going to put back in this spot?

I'm a big fan of rotating crops to help control pests. But the soil is also nice and loose. And now that we are coming into summer I'm limited in what plants I can start now that can tolerate the 90 degree temperatures we will have by next week. Sweet potatoes fit the bill.

The kale will provide some shade while the vines get established. After last year's adventures, with vines spilling out of the tub and rooting into the surrounding mulch, I think this bed will have more than enough space for redirecting the vines and getting the tubers to develop in a more suitable medium.

As for the rotation, yes these are both potatoes but they are from different botanical families. Irish potatoes are from the nightshade family, as are tomatoes, eggplant and bell peppers. Switching things up with sweet potatoes, which are from the morning glory family, will create a crop rotation.

Taking out the Herbage

This is the time of year to be cleaning out the herb garden. Time to prune back the overgrowth. Figure out which ones have survived. Divide the ones that have spread beyond their zones. Plan for the next plantings.

It's a dirty job, but it smells wonderful! Especially when you start with the mints.

Yes, I said mints. Plural. I have five different types of mint plus catnip, which is in the mint family.

Back row: chocolate mint, grapefruit mint. Front row: orange mint, spearmint, peppermint

I keep my mint in pots. It tends to take over the world if you don't. And come summer time, like in the picture above, if I don't prune them back regularly some will send out runners which try to root in the ground around the pots.

So this is what they look like after a rough winter:

Scrawny, scraggly, sometimes bare stems. But if you look closely you can see new growth peeking out from the soil line. If new growth is coming through all of the old growth can go.

Pruning back

New growth peeking through

Because mint has a tendency to root, I usually prune it back in my washrack area and let the stems dry out before tossing them onto my compost pile. I also use this as a chance to remove any leaf debris that has collected in the crowns, pull out any weeds that are trying to get established, and top dress with fresh potting mix. Then they go back to their usual spot next to the raised bed herb garden.

The raised bed had different issues. Cool season weeds like henbit are trying to camouflage themselves. The sage is starting to get a little lanky. The lemon thyme, first planted last spring, is in a spot that makes it very happy. A little too happy.

L to R: lemon thyme, rosemary, German thyme, chives (in front of German thyme), sage, Greek oregano (in front of sage).

The plan for this bed is to initially cut back about half of the sage to stimulate growth of new stems from the crown, clip back the dead chives, prune the oregano, and get the lemon thyme down to something about 1/10th of the size of the current plant. I ended up with six little thyme plants and another four from dividing the oregano, all of which found new homes with my coworkers.

As I was cleaning up this bed I realized the front boards on the raised bed are pulling away from the braces, especially on the corners. I won't be able to add in new garden soil or apply the straw mulch until that is repaired, but that's for a later blog post.

Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to

I'm making a concerted effort to put in a real "fall" garden this year. I'm diligently reading this, this, and most importantly this to learn more about when to plant cool-season crops in this part of Alabama.

I've had to restrain myself for much of July, champing at the bit to begin starting seeds and planning where to establish the next adventure. It didn't help that I shelled out close to $50 for a seed order, an order that I started and edited several times over before finally placing. I got adventurous and dreamed of parsnips, turnips, and beets. But most of all, I dreamed of potatoes.

Irish potatoes were a mainstay in my parents' garden when I was growing up. Age makes memories fonder, and now as I look back on my early gardening experiences about 30 years ago, I can now say I fondly remember laying out the rows of potatoes, digging the holes, placing seed potatoes, covering them up, etc. Rows upon rows of white potatoes, followed by rows upon rows of red potatoes. My great-grandfather had a saying about planting potatoes on Good Friday and harvesting by the 4th of July. That's all fine and good if you have the flexibility in the garden to till up just one section, but we plowed our garden which meant it got fit in sometime around the beginning of May. Nonetheless, we would raise enough potatoes to last all winter long. To me, no garden is complete without potatoes, and it was frustrating the first few years that I tried growing them in my first attempted garden in the front yard.

I believe the online seed catalogs have it out for us southern gardeners. We can grow potatoes spring and fall, but most only carry seed potatoes for spring. And they lull you into believing they will ship at the time appropriate to your growing zone, only to have the package arrive in May, which is great if you live in the upper Midwest but about two months behind schedule for those of us trying to beat the heat. This time I tried staying on top of it, and in July I discovered one company had seed potatoes available then and there. Dakota Pearl, here we go!

I've come to realize, talking with some of my gardening friends, that Irish potatoes are not a common garden crop in Alabama. So it was by trial and error over the last three years I have finally gotten the routine down pat. This spring I was rewarded with a respectable crop of Yukon Golds.  And now thanks to Gurneys.com and their Dakota Pearl variety, here's a how-to pictorial on planting potatoes as I put in my first attempt for a fall crop.

Prep the soil. Potatoes really do prefer loose, somewhat sandy soil. There's a reason they grow so well in central Wisconsin and southern Idaho. The beauty of gardening in raised beds is that they allow you to put together any soil type you want. In this case, it's a native soil mixed with commercial garden soil and a healthy dose of composted horse manure. Loose, fluffy, beautiful! And most importantly, no potato crop in this bed this year. Rotation is a good thing, and key for controlling some of the garden pests that invade around here.

Time to hoe! The point is to break up and loosen the soil after removing the previous crop (zucchini plants) plus work in the composted manure I had top-dressed while the previous crop was growing. I'm not aiming for fine and powdery, just mostly homogenous. The hard part is not to get overzealous with the hoeing so that the dirt doesn't end up on the path beside the raised bed.

Read the directions. Dig a furrow accordingly. Growing up we would dig individual holes, but here I simply don't have the space. A trench will have to do.

With seed potatoes, you can cut each one into pieces so long as each piece has an "eye." Because these have already sprouted a little it's pretty easy to tell where the viable eyes are. In this case, because I only have 8 feet of growing space, about a third of these babies are heading off to my friend's garden.

Having a trowel with inches labeled on it is handy for checking the depth. The seed potatoes need to be deep enough that the crop doesn't all develop at the surface. For most gardeners, planting too deep means there may be problems with rot before the sprouts can emerge. For my garden, because the native soil under the raised bed is hard, planting too deep means the potatoes do not develop in the ideal soil structure. 

Cover the potatoes - I prefer a garden rake so I have better control over the soil.

And wait. Except that I'm in the middle of a mini-drought so I'm breaking out the sprinkler so that the poor things get enough water to develop roots and send up their precious ruffled first leaves.

Here we are, a little over a month later, potatoes well on their way. It would be better if it wasn't so hot so that they stay a little more short-and-squat for now rather than getting tall and rangy. No worries though, when they start to get unwieldy they can simply flop over the side of the raised bed and stay out of the way of the root vegetables that now occupy the other side of the bed. But that's another post.

It would also be better if the armyworms that were feeding on the tomatoes didn't decide to take up residence on the potatoes - which is why they have a liberal dusting of Sevin. 

End of the Lettuce

Strong thunderstorms blew through yesterday afternoon. I wasn't here for it, but the red and orange blobs on the radar looked impressive. Only 0.7 inches in the rain gauge, whereas my friends two miles away had over 2 inches. Such are the precipitation patterns in Alabama.

Along with the rain was some strong wind. I found one of my gladiolus spikes flat against the ground, and about half of the lettuce snapped off. I was going to pick lettuce and tear out the stems this weekend anyway, but I moved it up a day so I could salvage some of the lettuce that got hit by the storm.

I filled five gallon-size resealable bags with lettuce leaves, trying to put together a good variety of leaf types. The stems got cut off at ground level and are destined for the compost piles. The next step will be adding compost to the raised bed and working the soil so I can transplant the last few squash plants. Something for tomorrow.

The lettuce patch, last week.