My Purple Viking potatoes got scab! They taste great anyway. Something new to read up on for the winter months.

We had such a great crop of potatoes last year that we knew for sure we would have a great one this year.

Well….

Yes and No.

We planted two varieties again. The Purple Viking and last year’s winner German Butterball. All derived from Seedsavers.org (love em).

So it’s now mid-August and even though we’ll be harvesting all of them at the end of the month (like we did last year) we pulled a few today for dinner.

Waahhhh! The Purple Viking have scab. We pulled 4 of them and 2 had it really bad and two were not so bad. The German Butterball were lovely as usual.

Purple Viking Potato with Scab

I like to think of myself as a new vegetable gardener. I did have a veggie garden eons ago while I was still in college (go figure I told you I was domestic) but we lived in an area that must have been toxic because there were no bugs and we didn’t really know what we (my mom and I) were doing but we got a good harvest. I only did it one year and I ordered plants from those places you see in the inserts in your Sunday newspaper.

So like I was saying I’m new at this. I didn’t read about all the things that can go wrong with potatoes. I found one article about how to grow them in pots and went for it. I’m reading about it now.

That being said I now have started my list on growing succesful potatoes so next year we hopefully won’t have this problem.

Gardening is not perfect. A learning experience all the way.

Okay so here are today’s gardening links…

Seed Savers Potatoes (out of stock until later)

Dissertation to Dirt (I just liked this blog on gardening. Cute couple. And yes the link is about potatoes)

WSU’s page about purple potatoes (don’t be mad UW)

Saving of Seed Potatoes how to

And old post on a veggie garden

I don’t have any pics…yet but I have little green tomatoes all over our many plants. Again this year some are unlabeled (the ones my husband gleaned from our starts). My husband wants to see what will happen when some tomatoes are left to their own devices so we will see.

We have Brandywine (some rogue lonely dying plant that I picked up at a store), Green Sausage, some cherry tomatoe variety I have to go read the pack again. And my favorites, Black from Tula, Amish Paste (these grew well last year) and Gold Medal.

More to come…

Have I mentioned before my love/hate relationship with lettuce?

I love it. It’s so fresh and adds so much to a sandwich, or salad.

I’ve been trying to grow it forever.

I’ve discovered I’m not patient enough and I usually start cutting and picking leaves long before the stuff has matured.

This year I bought a lettuce bag and planted tons of little tiny lettuce seeds.

As I mentioned before I’m impatient and I got my nose out of joint because they didn’t sprout soon enough for me.

So now I have tons of lettcue.

I wanted to plant a succession of lettuce crops but that means planting thinly which I did not.

My other pet peeve is washing lettuce.

This is my method…

1. Spray lettuce before cutting.
2. Soak a few minutes in a cold water bath in the sink
3. Drain the water and soak again.
4. Drain the water and soak again
5. Spray leaves as I’m pulling out to spin (my mother finally gave me back our lettuce spinner)

On my drain yesterday an earwig went down the drain…

WHAT?!

I had washed the mess THREE times!

I still love lettuce and we ait it anyway.

BTW I’ve had the stuff from the grocery store hatch larvae in my fridge before sssshhhhuuudddderrrrr!!!! It was organic

By the way this week’s e-newsletter from Molly Green was about lettuce. Recipes and all. If you don’t subscribe you should. It’s free for the weekly newsletter and you get nice tips and some free resources.

How do you wash your lettuce?

Just discovered this lady’s lovely fruit garden post the other day. I thought it would offer lovely inspiration. She tells how she put it together in a pretty frugal way if you ask me.

Anyway. Enjoy…

My New Fruit Garden at The Pleasures of Homemaking

I’ve been helping my mother with her garden and with all of the rain we’ve been having in the Northwest slugs are becoming a big problem. I remember as a kid dealing with them with salt but that doesn’t seem so grand anymore.

So to the web it was and I browsed the internet looking for nice eco ways to get rid of them. I landed upon using a barrier of oat bran. So I picked up some nice Bob’s Red Mill Oat bran with which to cut those icky slugs with. But then after sprinkling a bit we noticed the ants walking off with it. Not really wanting to feed the ants it was back to the drawing board.

Then I called my Master Gardener friend and here is what she suggested.

a) There is the slug beer drowning method. I guess they go after it and drown. You have to clean out the bowls regularly so as not to be too disgusted. Not being a drinker I really didn’t want to go buy any and bring it into the house. That method is out.

b) Then there is the copper shock method. I guess copper shocks them. You put a barrier of it around your plants and when they touch it they get shocked. So then you just have to get your hand on some copper. She also suggested you could use pennies. Here is a smidgen article about how much copper is in which pennies in case this is you method du jour.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stop Snails And Slugs In Their Tracks (backyardgardeningtips.com)
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We’re well into our container gardening this year and in case you were wondering how others were going about it I’ve dug up a couple of links for you…

1. My friend sent this one to me.  You’ll like it. Originally published in 2008, and loving called a patio farm, Jan has done a lot of experimenting on what can grow in pots and how.

And here’s a nice pick of her garden as of April

2. How to make your own salad bowl. With the recent (and yet again) ecoli breakout maybe it’s time.

3. And here’s a nice site all around about the ways of porch gardening. Lots to browse through so take your time

and be sure not to miss this carnival

Our Own Update:

Our gardening update is the tomatoes and peppers are in their containers and we had a hail storm…

Well we’re going strong with the garden. We’ve been getting out there every day watering, checking, tapping our fingers, waiting.

Tomorrow we’ll put out the tomato starts. I’ve been hardening them off the last 2 weeks and now they just hang out outside waiting for me to transplant them. I’m scared. I admit it. Tomato plants are so fragile and tempermental at the beginning that I get nervous any time I touch them. Last year we didn’t pluck or trim the suckers or whatever you call that so we’re going to do that this year. If I remember correctly we let them grow wild until about July and the finally my husband convinced me to leave him alone with them for a morning. When I came back he had hacked and twisted them into submission. I was afraid they were dead but they kept giving us great tomatoes all season long.

This year I also have to be a bit more careful about blossom end rot. I had that problem with some last year. I have the lime and I have to be more diligent about checking the water reservoir early on. They (I use the Garden Patch) say you only need to water once a week but I found myself needing to water every couple of days and when it got scorching sometimes daily.

The potatoes are doing well. They took a while to get going because it was still a bit chilly outside but they’re doing well now and we will probably need to top them off with more potting mix next week.

That’s all for now!

Well it’s gardening season again and we’ve started. How about you?

For the potatoes we are hoping to repeat the success we had growing the potatoes in the Smart Pots.

We are reusing the same Smart Pots. They have been rinsed and nicely stored since last season. I did find a few petrified bagworms embedded in the fabric but (deep breath) I’ve moved past it since my husband dug them out for me.

I’m kicking myself for not saving some of our potatoes over to plant. We ate the last of them about a month ago. So I reordered seed potatoes from Seed Savers. I purchase two variets. The same from last year, German Butterball, and a new variety, Purple Viking which has a white flesh and purple skin.  Both of these came in nice and large. Last year the German Butterball were kind of small and so were the tubers from our yield.

Now I have learned from the Homestead Blessing sisters and their homemaking gardening video that if you want larger tubers don’t cut your potatoes down. That’s it in a nutshell so don’t quote me but we had larger tubers from Seed Savers so we did not cut and we planted them whole. Even though they had several eyes per tuber.

Now to plant the potatoes we used 2 15 gallon and 1 30 gallon Smart Pots. We filled each pot halfway with potting mix that had mixed with 1 shovel full of peat moss. Then we added 3 tablespoons of Oscomote granules (don’t know the article said to use this fertilizer).  Then we stuffed about 5 potatoes per pot down in the stuff. We let Peanut do this and hope they are placed far apart enough. Then we watered.

Now we wait…(when the plants are about 3 inches above the soil line we are going to fill the rest of the pots with the same concentration of planting mix).