• Tag Archives potatoes

  • A Colony Divided Against Itself Can Stand

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                      Waning Flower Moon

    The potato bed now has three bags of composted manure dug into it and the leek, sugar snap, bok choy bed has one and one more coming.  Kate has weeded several beds including the herb spiral and the sun trap.  It all looks better with the weeds gone.  I found the seeds purchased Friday, so I’ll be able to plant them after lunch and the nap.

    The honey house is swept out and ready for a large table and better organization.  It feels good to have a place just to store bee related things like frames, hive boxes, the smoker, smoker fuel, bee suit and gloves.

    I leveled the foundation for the divided colony and after lunch, as the winds die down toward mid-day, I’ll do my first division.  We’ll see how that goes.  This will be my third colony.  After this year I should run at four colonies until or unless I have a winter kill or disease.

    A full outside day with pleasant (60 degree) temps and a light breeze.  Not like the 40 mph gusts from yesterday.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Garden Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Gnashing of Teeth

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                    Waning Blood Moon

    Back to the gnashing of teeth.  When I went out to plant the garlic this morning, I discovered Vega and Rigel had decided to become gardeners, too.  They dug up beds, they dug up around beds.  They moved a lot of soil, none of it in a constructive manner.

    This almost made me cry.  After some unpleasant words and gestures, a bit of stomping around, I called Dan the fence guy and said, “Dan, I need another fence.”  When he finishes, this yard will have more fence than many cattle ranches.  It will take days just to walk the fence line.  And this all inside an acre and a half.

    Anyhow, I planted the garlic, covered them with six inches of straw and protected them with left over chain link fence.  Later in the day I mulched the parsnips, which will over winter along with the garlic, and the carrots.  I’m going to try storing them in the ground with a heavy mulch to protect them.  In theory, then, I can go out in the middle of winter and harvest fresh carrots.

    The potato harvest is now in, too.  I dug up the Viking Purples (no kidding) and the rest of the white potatoes, washed them off and left them in a large plastic boxes to cure.  They stay at room temperature for two weeks, then downstairs to the coolest storage we have.  That’s outside the house at the bottom of the basement stairs, but still inside the garage.

    Got some nice feedback today on my organization skills for the Sierra Club and on my writing from a fellow Docent.  Also, a good nap.  That all helped.

    Big dogs bring big problems and big rewards.  Can’t get one without the other.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Garden permaculture Writing 📎and tagged

  • Garden

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                            Waning Blood Moon

    Planting and harvesting today.  Potatoes come out, garlic goes in.  I know, I’ve been meaning to get to that garlic for some time.  Today, though, it will happen.  This is the right time according to most things I’ve read though I wanted to try a different method this year, but didn’t get to it.

    Conference call at 11:00 so out the door and outside right now.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden 📎and tagged

  • Harvest and Preservation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                      Waning Harvest Moon

    It changed.  The game.  After half-time most of the time, I expected to see showed up.  How about that 64 yard run by Peterson?  Wow.  Still, it concerned me that we didn’t get more pressure on Brady Quinn.  I’m looking forward to the analysis.

    Kate has made grape juice, a lot, from the grapes I picked this morning.  Next is jelly.  I have a role in the preservation process this week.  We discovered last year that gazpacho is a perfect canned soup.  When chilled, it tastes like it was made that day.  A great treat in the middle of winter, a summer vegetable soup.

    We also several Guatemalan blue squash.  They run about a foot and a half long and 7-8 inches wide.  Heavy, too.  Taste good.   We still have parsnips (next year), turnips, carrots and potatoes in the ground, probably a beet or two hanging around, too.  Above ground we have lettuce, beans, greens and some more tomatoes.  Kate’s put up 36 quarts of tomatoes so far.

    Kate also made use of our dehydrator.  Cucumber chips.  I know, but they taste wonderful.

    There’s a lot of room for improvement in next year’s garden, but we feel good about the production this year.  Next year we should get more fruit from our orchard.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking Garden permaculture Sport 📎and tagged

  • My Dog Ate My Remote

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

    OK.  In previous episodes of the Vega/Rigel saga our heroines have:  escaped multiple times, eaten the recently installed netaphim, chewed up various hoses and their inside beds and, most famously, eaten my wedding ring.  All that, but now they’ve done something serious:  revealed the insides of the dvd player remote.  Yike.  Can you imagine manually inputting every command to your dvd player?  I thought not.  Sigh.

    Kate’s back and she’s glad to be back.  It allowed a day to rest and today we’ve begun work on the meal for the Woollies.  I dug potatoes and pulled beets and carrots (three colors–white, purple and orange)  while Kate brined the two free-range chickens I bought yesterday at the grocery store.

    While filling the dogs pool (yes, they have one in addition to the water container.), I squatted down to hold the hose, the shortened bit Vega has left me.  Crack, snapple and pop.  Not rice krispies.  Nope.  It was my lower back.  Owee.

    Kate is a great resource on how to handle back pain so I have been her apprentice since then.  She also gave me some pain meds that helped, too.  I wanted to go out to the Marsh in Minnetonka to see the opening of Moon’s art show, but I can’t make it.  Moon is Scott Simpson’s 92 year old Cantonese mother-in-law.

    I do have to go to the grocery store for the stuff we decided we need for the meal.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Health Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Dinner Straight From the Plant

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

    Dinner with vegetables straight from the garden is a treat and can be a surprise.  It was tonight.  We had potatoes, new potatoes-709042potatoes, dug just before cooking.  They had a distinct flavor, a nutty earthy  tone unfamiliar from the long since harvested potatoes typical of both home and restaurant cooking.  This meal included our garlic, our kale and chard, the potatoes garnished with our flat parsley and a bowl of sugar snap peas as an appetizer.

    Digging potatoes involved a spading fork to loosen the soil, then searching around under the earth for these lumpy  treasures.  They grow well in the sandy soil here in Andover.

    (pic:  potatoes before harvest)

    Kate takes off for the Grand Teton’s tomorrow, a CME conference.  BJ is also out there, playing in the Grand Teton music festival as she has for the last several years.  The Tetons have an incredible beauty, the American Alps, a very young mountain range.  She’s back on Wednesday, then we go to see a micro-surgeon who has perfected the technique for cervical vertebrae.  He’ll evaluate Kate’s candidacy for that surgery.

    Lots of weeding today and more tomorrow.  A normal task in late July, early August.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden Great Work Health permaculture 📎and tagged

  • The Harvest Has Well Begun

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                      Full Summer Moon

    The garlic harvest is in the shed drying.  The mature bulbs now lie, a bit dirty, on an old screen I use for drying vegetables we intend to store.  It was a good harvest and, if last year is a rule, it is enough garlic to last us the full year until next July.  Some of these bulbs, about half, come from cloves I grew two years ago.  Very satisfying.

    I dug up a bit of a potato plant to see if they’re ready to harvest for new potatoes, but they are not..  The potatoes ranged from tiny, about the size of the tip of my little finger, to one that would cover about half of my palm.  The last time I grew potatoes was on my farm, The Peaceable Kingdom.  One fine September evening I took a hit of mescaline and lay among the potatoes, the sky blue overhead.  The potatoes grew, visibly, as I lay there, shaking gently and rising slowly from the soil.  I could feel the tubers beneath me swell.  It was a direct and wonderful connection to a garden.  Wish the rest of the time had been that pleasant.

    Moving stuff around in the basement so Jon can build us a wall for our storage cellar.  That’s next.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Pictures. Puppies and Plants.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                    Waxing Dyan Moon

    dogfamily

    Poppa (the big gray wolfhound, Guiness) and his children.  Our new pups are in this picture, but I can’t pick them out.

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    orchfirstgrowseas

    The orchard early in its first growing season.  Currants in the foreground to the right, cherries and plums the trees in mid-ground.

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    potatoeyeview

    A potato eye view of its bed.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged