Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Garden Update

Here are some pictures of my tiny garden:















Back row: yellow pear tomato, early girl tomato, anonymous tomato, snap pea
Middle row: 5 jalapeno peppers (Little Dog dug one up)
Front row: 6 serrano peppers

Early girl tomato is living up to her name, with no less than 6 beautiful green orbs. The other 2 are slow learners.




















No peppers yet, but plenty of flowers.




















And I think my pea plant is dying. But I got to eat 2 pods right off the vine, so I'm happy.
















And remember my potato experiment? Here's part 2:















Does anyone know when you harvest a potato?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Vicki - I picked up your very enjoyable blog from your PW post.
I have to find some jalapeno brats! I'm a recent "immigrant" to Wisconsin, the capitol of brats - and I don't much like them, most are coarse and fatty. But jalapenos- I love the little devils, so I'll start looking...
re: potatoes - usually they flower, then the vines wither. When they are mostly dried up, the spuds are ready. Earlier, you can carefully insert fingers and feel around for little 2" "new potatoes", but with your potted plant I don't think I would. BTW, you can grow spuds in old garbage cans/5gal buckets quite easily: drill drainage holes (at least 1/2" diameter, larger is better) in bottom and some up sides, put in layer of dirt and straw about 6" thick, lay seed spuds on top - it should hold about 6 nice size ones. Cover with 4" or so of more dirt/straw, water, and leave alone until sprouts show. As they grow, you will start filling in with more dirt/straw. They grow fairly fast - eventually you will have leaves at the top of the garbage can, then you just keep them moderately watered while they do the potato thing. At the end of the growing season, you dump the garbage can out on a tarp or something, and harvest LOTS of spuds! I've done this and variations of this method for many years. Good way to recycle old split plastic g-cans, or rusted out metal ones. Kudos on your little garden, any size garden is better than none!
Candy in WI

Vicki said...

Hi Candy -
Thanks for the tater tips, and thanks for visiting!

Wandering Chopsticks said...

I'm doing this too. Forgotten potatoes that had sprouted so I cut them up and just planted them. I figure I'll harvest them as fingerlings.

Vicki said...

Hi WC -
Do you have any idea when to harvest? Or should I just dig a little, assess the situation, and then put the dirt back?

Wandering Chopsticks said...

I have no idea. So yeah, I'd say dig a little and if a fully formed potato is there and you want to eat it as a fingerling, then dig it up.

Otherwise, do as Candy suggested and wait until the tops wither, that means the root part is ready to eat. Or that's how it worked with the shallots in my yard.

I had some forgotten fava beans and some of them went bad. I planted those too and they're now growing!

Vicki said...

Adventures in gardening, I love it!