The Plan

With all the frosts, I started to worry about the sweet potatoes. Actually I was a bit worried they were going to produce at all… it’s just so hard to know what is happening underground. I want a transparent garden floor, or x-ray vision. But since neither of these were immediately attainable, I settled for digging. And I pleasantly discovered the sweet potatoes had been very busy producing quite a bit of root.

We planted three different varieties: Georgia Jet, Vardaman, and Beauregard. If we had them labeled correctly the GJ’s were red skinned, the V were orange and the B were somewhere inbetween. These and more varieties with description on www.sweetpotatoplant.com. The V were most split, the GJ were the heaviest producers, but they might have gotten a head start on the others and the B were tightly bunched. We are eating a variety for dinner tonight so I’ll need to wait to talk about taste.

Milo, the cat, is looking in the window. A better picture of milo on Flickr at the right.

We planted a nice little bed of garlic last Sunday. I didn’t take any pictures, but I will come Spring when they start to grow. Fall is the time to plant garlic bulbs. Along with all the other bulb flowers you might have sitting around. We have lots sitting around. Can’t even really be sure what half of them are anymore, but I’m sure they will be great.

We planted our garlic in a dense bed, spacing the individual bulbs 6 inches apart in rows approximately 10 inches apart. The soil was pretty wet. We poked index finger deep holes in the soil and pressed the cloves inside. Covered everything with some dirt, said some magic gardening incantations and that was that.

It’s getting to be that time. And finally today we had sun. It was a perfect fall day. Perfect in every way. The birds were chirping in harmony and rythmic syncopation. Jake and Buddy were running circles around the shed. Buddy would run away and Jake would change directions to catch him coming around counter-clockwise. But Buddy knew the game and quickly spun and ran with Jake behind. Both of them loved every dirty paw moment as they ripped into the soggy earth.

I kept pulling and thinning the tomato plants. They needed it long ago. We let them go crazy. They produced tons, but so many are split and rotten. I might need to rake some of them up and move them to the compost area. Or maybe they will compost right where they are. And now what to do with all the green ones? I have several setting on a window sill and still more in plastic containers. We’re hoping they ripen.