Last night, as I noshed on some delectable roasted potatoes I had grown last year that were dressed in olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper, I felt myself get that excited glow I always get when I'm about to sow crops on the farm.
This morning, I popped out of bed, with a healthy amount of vigor which was a bit surprising as last night my two horses decided to go on a full moon walkabout at 3AM. I don't know how I know when they tend to do their rare escapes, but I guess I am not too sad to have gone out into the peaceful moonlit night, whistle, and show my ponies back into their preferred pen. Their new field was just too much freedom and space for them I guess....
Anyway, after a nice breakfast of liquid greens and things, the hubs and I charged out to the garden. We are keeping things nice and compact this year, our garden is only 80X100 feet, which for us is a small garden. The sun was out and I listened to the ducks right next to us in the orchard have a domestic dispute as I marked off rows for the potatoes.
The state of my soil made me squee a little this morning, for twenty years I have been amending the silty sand with load after load of compost and growing cover crops to add matter; the results are just smashing.
My cowboy corgi, Crazy Cora, was so full of Mom won't let me fly through the dirt angst that I must admit I had a bit of a smile on my face for the entire seeding operation due to her fidgeting alone. Being a subspecies of human who truly enjoys frugality, I use no fancy equipment when planting, just an old 1X4 to mark out the rows, and an ancient Pulaski to dig the seed potato trenches.
One lovely thing about today's potato seeding is that every potato I planted was one I grew myself. After many years of trial and error, I have finally figured out how many potatoes to grow to eat for the winter while also having about 3 milk crates of seed potatoes for seeding the following spring. To quote Colonel Hannibal off of the A Team, "I love it when a plan comes together."
Because honestly, in gardening and homesteading, there are a lot of oops or I won't be doing that again moments. Humble pie is a frequent dish in these parts.
After all 240 row feet of potatoes were planted, I moved on to planting something I don't usually have around here, onion sets. If I am going to take the time to grow onions, I usually start them from seed, but the hubs came home the other day with a bag of red onion sets, and I thought I better get those little purple alliums into the ground.
Using my super fancy square foot gardening apparatus (a milk crate), I marked off a bed for the onions to live in. I like to intercrop my onions with fast maturing crops for weed control while the slow growing onions mature. Friday, when I go out to plant my peas, I'll throw some lettuce, spinach, and radishes in between the onions. I planted five to a square foot just to leave space for the greens and radishes. Also, I am optimistic about the size I can get those reds, I want them YUGE!
Which of course means I am going to have to up my fertilizer game. Last year I had some great yields with my combo of composted manure (for certain crops), compost, organic fish and kelp emulsion, and comfrey compost tea. I am going to mess around with some more organic fertilizer combinations in the form of tea amendments, because they are fun. Plus, there's my gigantic pumpkin that I have been seeking to grow for like ever to consider, my dang growing season is so short though that it is definitely a high aim, but I am going to win!
And now I am going leave this garden report, as I have a track meet to attend! Happy gardening to you all!!!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's slightly silty and always salty iPhone.
