Monday, May 19, 2008

Steady Now...

I'm just "biting at the bit" (as DH would say) to dig up some potatoes and since I'm not so good at that little thing called "patience," I dug up one...just one!...plant this morning to see what was going on under all that dirt. Little M and I brought in a handful of tiny new potatoes and fried them up with some eggs then we devoured the whole lot! Unfortunately, all this happened so fast that I didn't get any photos. Okay...I forgot to take photos. Sorry.

In the West Garden:
I also put some corn in a couple of weeks ago and the tiny plants are coming up.
The cantelope plants look great.
The girls and I go out every other day and pick potato bugs off our potato plants. These guys can be really destructive to your potato crop...especially this time of year when the potatoes are blooming.

In the Square Foot Beds:
Our lettuce and spinach collection is growing. I anticipate that we'll be able to stop buying salad in the next week or so.
The Pole Beans are getting a good start, but not really climbing yet.
Our Sugar Snaps have taken off. They're really starting to climb and producing several sugar snaps to throw in our salads each day.
The cucumbers are really getting a slow start and are a bit yellow. I put out some organic fertilizer (earthworm poop) and they seem to be perking up a bit.
I'm planting a few more varieties of lettuce today and replanting beets...which have failed horribly. Not sure how I screwed up the beets, but I'll try again since I had some seed left over.

Other stuff:
I've harvested a bowlful of strawberries every morning. These are going in the freezer for either jam or some lovely strawberry shortcake.
Our blueberry bushettes are tiny, but they have a few berries. I take this to mean that they are thriving and healthy.
We planted birdhouse gourds to grow up the sides of the swingset. They've come up and look healthy.

Little M and I will head out with the camera in a bit and I'll try to post photos soon. Progress is good, but my nails are shot...I guess farmgirls don't worry with maintaining a manicure, huh?

1 comment:

Elizabeth said...

Oh my, I didn't know whether or not potato bugs are common in Oklahoma. Now I know I'll have to watch for them when I do potatoes next year. Not that it's difficult to spot them, considering how big they are!

The very first time I ever saw a potato bug was in California when I was 14. I'd never heard of them before and didn't even know that bugs with that kind of body could get that big, so I screamed for my dad the day I walked out onto the front stoop and saw what I thought was a giant, mutated ant staring right at me! I think my dad was secretly laughing at me when he saw what had scared me so bad. But in my defense, we lived within eyesight of the nuclear power plant and I'd watched far too many B-rated movies on USA Up All Night!