Tuesday, June 14, 2011

And the maintance begins

Was out in the garden the other day and the pole beans are poking through and already taking off at a breakneck pace.  I'm really impressed with how fast they grow.  Reminds me of Morning Glory how fast these things just seem to explode out of the ground.  In 48hrs they are already close to climbing.  Which was really encouraging.  I'm anxious to get them going, so the teepees don't look so bare.

I already had to hill some of the potatoes.  I bought them pretty early out of a fear I wouldn't get any.  Well they all had sprouts easily 4" long and that was in a closed bag in the laundry room!  Was a little weird to see them with already with growth.  Like they were undead potatoes trying to climb out of the bag to get us.  They were pretty pale, but they were there.  So I opened the bags, let the sun hit them to help encourage growth, and got them in the ground.  Well the leaves have started to open up on quite a few of them and I went out and rehilled them.  It was just dirt that was handy I hadn't expected to have to hill them yet.  We got a good soaking rain last night, so the ground settled and left a good amount of the stems exposed. 

I had wanted to hill them with compost but I happened to be there and it was all I had available.  Now that I know they are trying to do this, Ill have the compost ready for next time.  I figured I had a few weeks.  Apparently not, but thats ok cause I hope it will lead to more potatoes.  It was mostly the red skins which were quite aggressive.  A few of the russets had just started to sprout a few leaves too and the Adirondack blues have too.  But their sprouts were thick and much more compact.  They were in a mesh bag instead of a brown paper grocery bag so I don't know the occasional light had something to do with it or not.

I have to say though, the leaves that the purple potatoes put up?  GORGEOUS!  They remind me of Coleus with these beautiful bi-colored leaves.  The russets are actually the slowest starting of the 3 kinds which surprised me.  I thought for sure the Adirondack blues (aka the purple potatoes) would be the slow growers being they are a special bred potato.

Anyway I gotta get out and weed.  Maybe Friday Ill do that.  Its looking kind of ragged out there, and with it being so close to the driveway, I can't hide my lack of work on it.

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