The Potato Project

I've grown potatoes before but had given it up because the potato bugs had a field day and ate the plants all up. My neighbour grows potatoes and I asked him what he did about the bugs, he said he picked them off one by one. I tried that. It didn't work for me at all because A) The bugs make the most disgusting crunchy sound when picked and squashed and B) I really don't have 3 hours plus a day to be picking off bugs because as sure as the sun shines, I can pick 'em off in the morning and by lunch time a whole new crew has moved in and started another munch-in. I decided that my neighbour most likely just sent all his bugs over to my garden.

I was disappointed that I didn't have potatoes because the first year was so great. I never really considered growing potatoes; I live on Prince Edward Island and potatoes are plentiful and cheap (until lately). But I was visiting a friend and she asked me if I would like some russet potato sets for my garden. I love red potatoes! As she blithely cut sets for me, I started asking questions. How deep do I plant them? How far apart? Do I plant them skin side up or down? How high should the rows be? Should they be watered daily until I see sprouts? Do they need a lot of water or are they a little drought resistant? She handed me a paper bag full of potato cuttings and said, "Would you please stop micro-managing? Dig a trench, throw them in, cover 'em up, get on with your life." So I did and I got beautiful potatoes. That was the first and last time I ever had any success with taters. The next year the bugs found my potatoes.

I'm hoping my luck will change this year. Another friend of my told me about the tire method of growing potatoes. So I'm going to try that. The theory is great, makes a lot a sense so naturally I'm suspicious of it. If there's one thing I've learnt in my gardening adventures it's everything is fine in theory, it's the nuts and bolts of the operation that messes everything up. And I always seem to have extra nuts hanging around. The process is simple, you get an old tire fill it with earth/compost/worm castings, stick a few potatoes in it and there you go. As the stalks get high enough, you put another tire on top of the first one and fill it again until only a little bit of the stalks are showing. The theory is the stalk you covered up with earth will start sending out roots and make more potatoes. That makes sense to me. Whenever I start new indoor plants from cuttings, I take off a few bottom leaves and roots will start growing where the leaves used to be. If I leave the leaves on, roots sprout around them. Apparently you can stack the tires 4 deep, and each tire supposedly gives 25 pounds of potatoes.

So I tried it this year and after a couple of teeny tiny little errors (ya notice theory never takes into account the intelligence of the person implementing the theory?), things seem to be coming up roses, or in this case, potatoes. I bought organic red potatoes from the grocery store, cut up a couple and put 8 pieces in the tire and covered them up. I found out, 3 pieces is usually the amount planted in a tire. Ooops. Two week later, I don't have one sprout. No little leafy taters starting up at all. So my neighbour gave me a few of his extras. He said the potatoes I used were probably sprayed with something to stop them from sprouting. Ew. So I planted 4 more and sure enough, the next day the first potatoes I planted make an unexpected appearance. Methinks I planted 'em to deep. Oh well, never mind, I have them growing and they seem to be doing well. The best thing is no bugs so far. I doubt if I will get to 4 tires high because I was late in planting them but I'm interested in seeing if this actually works. I do have some extra tires waiting just in case I need them.

Lessons of Green and Red

I put a lot of extra work into my strawberry patch this spring. Mainly because after picking the berries last year I let the patch go and it became very overgrown. That's pretty much an understatement of the year, I had thistle weeds in there that you'd need a stick of dynamite to get 'em out. I was determined to get my strawberries back into shape. I spent long, mosquito ridden hours digging up stubborn weeds, grass, treelings, etc. An hour and a half's work resulted in one bed being done, I had four, not to mention at least that much more space that had stray strawberry plants in them that I needed to tend to.

About halfway through the second bed, little nagging concerns started scurrying around in my brain, tripping over my nerve endings causing random thoughts to pop into my head, "Not seeing a lot of little white flowers here." and "Geez, where are all the runners?" were two of the most frequent. Well, I figured it was weedy so may-be the plants were overwhelmed, they'd do better now they had their space back.


After I finally got all the weeding done, I topped-dressed the whole bunch with compost and worm casings. Now all I had to do was get to the others that had sprung up outside the beds. Strawberry season came and considering the bounty I got last year, I was looking forward to making jam and freezing lots of strawberries. My yield was seven. Seven berries. Yup, seven, not counting the four or five half eaten ones I didn't pick. Seven.

If all else fails, read the instructions. So I went to my books and found out something very interesting about strawberries. They generally last three years, then they give up the ghost. Not only that but the planlets on the runners need special care if you want them to be fruitful. Wish I had known that before I put in a good 10 hours plus, not to mention a lot of good compost and worm castings. I should have known that strawberries came with an expiry date. I research everything. But strawberries were one of those impulsive buys, where I just stuck 'em in the ground to see what would happen. It was working perfectly so why mess everything up by looking for facts? Obviously, I should have.


Not all is lost. I will wait till the end of strawberry season before doing anything. I'll probably get a couple more I can toss in my cereal. Then I think I'll just till the whole area, being careful not to bother the daisies. Yes, I have two big daisy plants in there that I'd like to keep going. May-be I'll look into how to keep daisies coming back ... before it's too late.

All I Have to Do Now Is The Weeding

And may-be a little comfrey tea in a few weeks...probably top dress the plants at some point, too. But the point is the garden is in. It took longer than usual because the store-bought seeds were dismal. After two weeks, I realized not much was going to come up so I re-planted carrots, snow peas and beans.

I bought a flat of cucumbers because mine from seed didn't seem to be doing much. I think the biggest problem with mine was the flat they were in was on the top shelf on my silly greenhouse when it was toppled by the wind. Many cucumbers perished that day and the remaining ones were grievously wounded, out of the whole flat only six remained. When I went out to plant the new ones, I notice that mine are going like gangbusters. Guess I'll be making lots of pickles and celery relish this year. If I have too much, I can always add a jar or two into my Christmas baskets. Homemade anything seems to be well-appreciated (except if given to a teenager, but the look of mortification and horror on their faces is a Christmas gift in itself.)

The corn is doing really well, it's about 8 - 10 inches high now. The zucchini and pumpkins have flowers and the zucchini already have little tiny baby zucs. The tomatoes I bought are budding, the ones I grew are doing well too. The ones I left in that embarrassing cold frame seem to be much bigger than the ones I transplanted.

So it is done and I'm happy about it. The war on weeds is going full blast and I'm hoping to get out today to pick the ripe strawberries. Gardening is the coolest thing :).

Cold Frame Results

Last April I concocted a pretty sad looking cold frame just to see if it would work. It actually produced a bunch of tomato plants! Which is surprising because the design left a lot to be desired. There was way too much air circulation and things would dry out and I wasn't very good at remembering to water it. On top of that, the weeds also grew like, well weeds, and I wanted to wait before pulling anything so I didn't inadvertently pull tomato plants. So I'm figuring I had a lot more success than I had any right to. I am definitely going to do this again. In fact, I'm hoping to recruit teenage son, P, a pretty decent carpenter, to build me four nice, working, practical, cold frames this summer.

The tomatoes seemed to grow in clumps. At first, I thought I'd just leave them there to grow. Then I figured there wasn't enough room really, I had about 15 - 20 plants so I decided to transplant a few. It was difficult to separate the clumpy tomatoes' intertwining roots so I'm going to have to figure out if I will be able to remedy that. I'm thinking no, if I'm throwing the tomato waste in there in the fall, I don't see how I can avoid clumping. I smoothed and evened out everything as much as possible but I guess tomatoes like to grow together. Once I separated them, I planted them in the new garden I made. They are doing quite well there.

Busy Ceilidh

This morning I found Ceilidh putting the finishing touches on her nest. She's been building it for the last couple of days and I'm pretty sure she'll be having her kits shortly as in within the hour. What is cluing me in that the baby bunny arrival is imminent is how she is gathering the hay for the nest. After gathering the hay in her mouth she'll reach down and pull some fur. Usually when Ceilidh starts mixing the fur in with the hay, she's ready to kindle. She sort of weaves the hay and fur together and that is what I'll find covering the kits. Right underneath the kits it is all pure white fur and under that is nice, comfy hay bedding. She has a system and it really works well, she rarely looses a kit.

Sure enough, as I puttered around, feeding and watering everyone else, I peeked over and found Ceilidh in the nest box cleaning a little squirmy pink mound that passes as a newborn in the rabbit world. Once she is all finished, I'll go investigate and see how many she had and if there are any stillborns, I'll remove them.

That's Chamomile sitting on top of the nest box. From the start, Chamomile, or Camy for short, supervised the whole operation from atop the nest box. She started watching a couple of days ago when Ceilidh started mucking around in the nest box. She seems very interested but she doesn't get in the way. Camy is a young doe I'm growing out to be part of my colony. I hope she is picking up tips and helpful hints from Ceilidh. I'm thinking young does in a colony will be more successful with first litters than single does in a cage sometimes are. I think it helps them to observe an experienced doe get ready for babies. Just another reason why I really like the indoor colony idea.

Little Bagel-Face

One of my Partridge Chantecler chicks ended up with a beak that doesn't line up right. Looks weird and because the beak isn't aligned, he has a cross-eyed look as well. Don named him "Twistee Creme" after a childhood soft ice cream treat he liked. I call him Bagel Face when no-one's around. Sometimes I'll notice the beak is almost perfectly aligned then there are times when it looks like the picture above.

This ailment, as far as I have learned, is commonly called 'cross beak'. The jury is still out on whether it's a genetic thing or a hatch deformity. The usual 'treatment' is to kill the bird. Kind of harsh if you ask me. The theory is they can't eat and will starve to death. So I watch little Bagel Face very carefully and right now he is eating fine and is growing just as well as the other chicks. What's more, he's happy and bright, he gets along with all the chicks and no-one picks on him. He's one of the first ones to greet me in the morning. He's inquisitive and curious. I just can't look at him for too long because I'll burst out laughing. He's a sweet little bird, all things considered. Most importantly, his quality of life is the same as all the other chicks. He's not suffering and he's not unhappy. So unless that changes, I don't see any reason to do him in right now.

Making a Lasagna Garden

We decided this year to connect the main garden to the annex. We're calling it 'the appendage'! The extra garden area is going to be handy for a few reasons. I would really like to start growing a little grain, oats and barley namely, for the rabbits. Growing shoots in sunny winter windows that the rabbits really enjoyed made me think that it might be a good idea to grow some in the summer and dry it for winter feeding. Another reason for expanding is that part of the main garden needs to go fallow for at least a year, it doesn't produce well and it hasn't been built up with compost as much as the rest of the garden because I tend to run out of compost by the time I get to that part. I thought I would build it up as much as I could with bunny balls and compost and let it ferment over the winter. If I'm going to be losing part of the main garden, it'd be nice to have an extra area to make up for it. Don, of course, loves when any kind of extension is done, be it making the chicken area bigger or extending the garden. Anything that means less mowing is fine in Don's books. I don't blame him, even with a riding mower, an acre of lawn is quite a bit to mow.

The simplest way that I know of to connect the two is to make a lasagna garden. There's lots and lots of different ways to put together a lasagna garden. I have learnt there are few hard and fast rules. Everyone has their own method and ideas. I have never made the same lasagna garden twice, every one is made with whatever I have on hand. This one was put together with less layers than usual so we'll see how it does.

The first layer is newspaper that I roll up and put in a bin. Then I fill the bin with water. Apparently there is something in newspaper that kills the grass. I have found rolling up the newspaper makes it a lot easier to manage when it's wet, just take the edge and let it roll out and lay it down on the grass. The thickness of the newspaper is usually anywhere between three to six layers. I usually just use what ever the thickness of the paper is, no adding or taking away, just open up the paper, roll it and get on with my life. I don't sweat the petty stuff (and I don't pet the sweaty stuff). Newspaper seems to be the preferred medium but cardboard can also be used. I knew a couple that ran out of cardboard and newspaper but they had some old plywood hanging around. They drilled holes in that and laid it down. Seems to have worked fine. The first hard and fast rule is the first layer must be something that will prohibit the grass growing up through the lasagna garden as long as it's not plastic.

So I've laid out my newspaper and now I put on my second layer. The second layer is usually the stuff that will take the longest to break down so I used the 'mucking outs' (new homesteading word :)) of the chicken coop and the brooder. It's wood shavings and chicken dropping. This layer is generally the smelliest as well. I made the layer about 4 inches thick because that all the wood shavings I had. The thickness of my layers is directly dependant on how much I have. You'll notice that the shape is rather odd looking. That's because I didn't soak enough newspaper and ran out. By the time I soaked more paper, the ground and the paper laid out would be drying out would be a no-no. That's the second and last hard and fast rule, everything should be wet. So I decided that I'd do what I could for the time being. I knew I wouldn't complete the whole garden in one day anyhow. It's very rare I have 4 - 5 hours uninterrupted to do anything, except sleep and sometimes even that isn't a given. I'd get back to laying newspaper the next time I worked on it.

The next day, I soaked everything, laid down the rest of the newspaper and chicken shavings (that just sounds weird, like chickens know how to use razors and they need to) and put on the third layer. It's a mix of rabbit manure and dead leaves from last year. I mixed them together because I didn't have enough of the rabbit manure ( dang those worms, they eat it all). This layer is about 5 - 6 inches. It will break down fast and it doesn't need to be as composted as the higher layers.

With the next layer, it's beginning to look like a real garden. This layer is semi-composted compost. It's been sitting around since last December and only started breaking down with this spring's warmth. Even so, it's pretty decomposed but I will find the occasional eggshell, apple core or corn cob that is well aged but not quite disintegrated. No matter, it'll finish 'aging' here. Generally speaking, I like this layer to be the thickest as I consider it the one that will do most of the support care of the garden for that crucial first year. It's always as thick as I can get it. After each layer, I'll water it down. The wetter everything is the better. While the garden is moisturizing, I'll start hauling in the next layer by wheelbarrow. There's a lot of back and forth when making a lasagna garden from scratch with your own stuff from your own place. That is because the materials needed are scattered all over the place. A little in the coop, a bit in the compost heap, a smidgen by the trees... I suppose it wouldn't hurt to be organized but where's the fun in that? You'll notice there's a green patch that really shouldn't be there. I've left it because that's where the unexpected sunflowers started growing. I can always lasagna-patch that next spring.

The fifth and final layer! This layer is well aged compost mixed with worm castings and a little good earth. I like this layer to be as thick as possible, too. It's about 4 inches deep, a little on the thin side, but it should be OK because I will be planting in mounds and not digging down to make rows. I don't plant root veggies the first year in a lasagna garden. I like everything to break down before things start growing in it. So now the garden is good to go.

Usually my lasagna gardens have a layer of fresh cut grass but I didn't have any. I usually recruit one of the kids to follow their dad around as he mows the grass collecting the cuttings but they are up to their eyeballs in the end of term exams. When Don was cutting the grass, I was busy mucking out the chicken coop so no grass was collected. I thinks that's why I like this method of garden making the best, it's basically made up as I go. There is lots of room to improvise and usually everything works out fine.

Um, yes that is a tire in the foreground. It's a little experiment I'm doing. More on that once I know for sure if it worked or not.