Good Doug

So, I bought these bags to grow potatoes in and some potatoes to go in the bags. I got new soil, added fertilizer and watered them as directed, but it took quite some time for sprouts to poke out of the soil. I was really worried that my potato experiment was going to be a failure.

Potatoes growing in a bag

As you can see from the picture, the potatoes are growing quite well. That is one of the six bags. The concept is quite simple, you plant the seed potatoes down near the bottom, cover with a couple inches of soil and keep them watered (but not flooded.) When the plants are about 8" high, add about 4" of soil. As the plants keep growing, keep adding soil until the bag is full as shown to the left here. I'll keep them healthy through watering and maybe another application of fertilizer. Once they've finished growing, the stems will wilt and die back. That's when you are supposed to stop watering them, they'll be ready to harvest after that.

There's a whole science to storing potatoes. I wish I had time and yield to get into that, but I have a feeling that we'll use up most of the potatoes by around Thanksgiving. For my tomatoes, I have it all figured out. Canning tomatoes is simpler than canning most things, because they have such high acid they can be canned at regular boiling temperature. What I did before was to cook down a bunch of tomatoes, run them through a french mill and then can them in regular jars. I'll probably also do some salsa like I did last time. I'll try and post the recipe for that when I get to it.

Tomatoes in my garden

My tomatoes are doing pretty well, considering the cold start we've gotten on this summer. I'm trying to water them even less this year to see how it affects growth, yield and flavor. I've talked with many people that have completely dry farmed their tomatoes, and it seems like it should work. Especially this year as the temperatures have stayed fairly low here. Here's hoping the temps pick up before wilt sets in.

Lastly, I finally got around to building a real compost bin as recommended in a book. It is four feet by four feet by four feet, which doesn't sound that big until you actually build it and it's sitting there in your yard. But I've already got it about one quarter full of all sorts of yard trimmings and whatnot. What the chickens don't eat of our table scraps is going in there now. I hope to have some nice compost for the garden next year.