Potatoes: The Treasure Hunt

Some days, it's hard to tell the difference between what is work and what is play.

Take digging potatoes, for instance. Surely smiles like this don't come from hard work...

And laughter of this variety can't come from chores... can it?

Ah, but maybe it can.

There are some wonderful opportunities out there for convincing children that work really can feel like play, if only it's approached with the right attitude. Or if it's turned into a wrestling match for the biggest potato pulled out of the ground.
 
We've never grown potatoes before. This whole Digging Potatoes experience was a splendid one, for all three of us.  It's a veritable treasure hunt, and one that requires Two Little Girls (and their Momma) to be elbow-deep in soil. And any job that involves a good bit of getting dirty is bound to be welcomed.

I'd love to offer you all a few great tips and hints for growing and harvesting potatoes, but I've got nothin'. We're brand new at this, and from all I have read, we did everything all wrong. The skins are thin because you're supposed to withhold water for a couple of weeks (someone should have told that to those rain storms that keep rolling through in the afternoons.) You're supposed to wait until the plants die back after frost to harvest, except that more than half of our potatoes already weighed over a pound and a half each, and I can't see letting them get any bigger. It'll only take one potato to feed all four of us at that rate.

So while they won't store in the cellar long, and they aren't anywhere close to being the perfectly shaped potatoes you find at the store, I'm sure we'll happily be eating baked potatoes and home-fries for a few weeks to come, anyway.

And next year, I'll read about harvesting potatoes before I decide to dig them all out of the ground. ;-)

Pretty Flowers

I'm not a flower gardener. I have a few plants in a little flower garden, more for the sake of my beauty-loving five year old (who is very much a flower person) than for myself. I grow food. Food sustains us. It is useful, and brings immense satisfaction from the time it begins to grow to the time it finds its way to our table.

That being said, we grew The Prettiest Sunflowers Ever this year.



It's called Earthwalker. The plant is taller than I am, and looks more like a bush than like the usual sunflower stalk. It's covered with dozens of flowers and buds. What's better, the hummingbirds are all over these flowers! When I go out to water, they zoom past my head and make me duck. I only wish I knew if these were heirloom or not- if they are, I'm totally saving seeds for next year.

It's simple, easy to grow flowers like this one that almost make me want to be a flower person. Almost.


Earthwalker seeds can be found at Pinetree Seeds, one of my favorite companies for ordering seeds. Great prices, great service, and a decent heirloom selection. (And they didn't pay me to say this.)

A Walk Through the Garden

 I haven't done much blogging or photographing of the garden this year. This is mostly because I'm disappointed in myself for not having as pretty of a garden as I've had in the past. It looks... well, it looks like a first year garden in a new climate. You know, because it is a first year garden in a new climate.


It's about 30 ft by 70 ft. I wanted it bigger, but tilling turned out to be quite a chore, and this was the most The Man of My Dreams could muster the time and energy to do. And now I'm grateful for that, since it's proving plenty big enough for my first year up here.

This picture is of weeds. Yep - that's how bad it is. I pull a wheelbarrow full of weeds each morning and night, but the bindweed and the goat-heads are just awful. Hopefully a few years of diligent weeding will prove successful. Apparently all the tilling The Man of My Dreams did for me ended up spreading the weeds, making them even worse.

Next year, no tilling.


I've also been disappointed because nothing seems to be growing. But what I've come to realize is that everything is definitely growing, it just all ripens about six weeks later that it did when we lived in The Big City. Six weeks is a very long time for a girl who has been waiting all year for fresh green beans and tomatoes. But we're getting there. 

Next year, patience.

 If there's one thing I can say about living here, it's that pollination isn't a problem. Every flower gets pollinated - bees and wasps abound, and they are doing their work diligently. In The Big City, many tomato blossoms would drop before they were pollinated, between the heat and the lack of bees. Not here though - cooler temperatures and an abundance of buzzing insects means plenty of pollination.

 I'm amused at how things that I couldn't grow for the life of me in The Big City are doing so well here. Broccoli never got a chance to develop a head before, because it would get so hot so fast. On nine broccoli plants this year, the heads weighed out at fifteen pounds, and we're still harvesting from the side shoots nearly every other day. I finally pulled out all the spinach - I put by thirty bags of frozen spinach before it bolted. In The Big City, cucumbers would wilt and shrivel in the dry heat if they weren't watered in the middle of the afternoon, and the fruits would be bitter. Here, the vines are clamboring up my pitiful trellis, and baby cukes are everywhere, shaded in the lush plants. The onions are growing nice big bulbs, thanks to less heat up here. They're big enough to be using, and will hopefully store well this fall, as I've got about 120 of them planted.

Next year, more broccoli.


 
The beans are growing, finally starting to flower just in the past couple of days. They quickly outgrew and pulled down the bamboo teepees and stuck out there. The ground is so rocky here that it's hard to get any stakes in deep enough to be sturdy.

Next year, stronger trellises and stakes. 

Littlest One planted corn this year. The only year I tried growing corn at the other house, it was a miserable, earwig-infested failure. I'm not sure this attempt will be any better, but it's fun to see her when she goes out and checks on it. It grows quickly, so she sees the changes often.

 Much of what we planted this year is experimenting - trying out new varieties, and growing vegetables we hadn't tried before. Potatoes and cabbage are both new to us, things we didn't have the space for in the past. The cabbage worms are grateful that we've planted so many varieties of brassicas for them to consume. The cabbage heads are big enough now to harvest, though I'm nervous that there are little wormies living inside there that are going to make us not want to eat it.

Next year, row covers.

 In the foreground of this picture are potatoes. I dug a trench as deep as I could go with all the rocks and boulders underground - about 18". I've since filled that back in and hilled up the potatoes another two feet or so, and they're just going crazy. Not sure if there's anything actually growing in there, but they sure are happy plants.

 Next year, potato crates.

And also growing quite well are the turkeys. I'm still fascinated by what neat birds they are. I'm also fascinated by how much they eat. We keep them penned up and feed them commercial game bird feed, and they go through more than I ever thought possible. I'm afraid to let them free range because I've heard it can be hard to get them to come back.
 
Next year, a moveable turkey pen. 


I have a feeling every year will come with a list of things to do "next year". It's all a learning experience. I'm realizing I need to give up my dreams of perfection in these early years while we figure things out. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, of course - this is farming after all. It will get better though, as experience is gained and routines fall into place. Until then, I will try to embrace the imperfection and learn graciously from the lessons this land has to teach me.

Missouri Trip: Bakersville

Blogging trips is so hard to do - we do so many things I want to write about, and take hundreds of pictures, and sorting through it all and finding the words to describe it all can be a daunting task. But I'm at least going to try, for posterity's sake, you know.

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In the beginning of October, the girls and I set off on an adventure. And adventure without The Daddy (gasp!) that included driving 20 hours east. There were many stops along the way, all of which I'll eventually blog about, and ending in a little town called Mountain View, Missouri, deep in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks.

One of the stops we made was Mansfield, Missouri. Our main reason for stopping was to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum there, but discovered another little gem close by: the little town of Bakersville, familiar to anyone who orders heirloom seeds from Baker Creek. We've ordered our seeds from them for years, and I'd always wanted to visit their little town. I had no idea driving through that we'd be right there, but plenty of signs led us right to them. And it was such a treat to visit this place (especially for this avid heirloom gardener.)



The gardens were utterly fantastic, and this was in early October, when they were long past their peak. But still there were bright colors in every shade of red and purple and orange and pink tucked away here and there, and flower gardens still bursting with color. I'm not a flower gardener, but this may have inspired me to become one!



We visited on a Wednesday afternoon. It was super quiet, hardly a soul to be seen, but I think that added a bit to the overall effect of the town. The shops were all void of people, meaning we could walk and look and talk to our heart's content without feeling rushed at all. The folks that worked there were sweet as could be.



There were shelves of jams and jellies for sale, handmade crafty bits of all kinds, an apothecary with jars and jars of dried herbs, books on every subject interesting to folks like me, and of course, seeds. Row upon row of heirloom, antique-variety seeds for purchase. It was a gardener's dream come true.

Not only do they grow heirloom seeds at Bakersville, but they grow heirloom chickens. All shapes and sizes and manner of fowl, really. You'd think, seeing as we have chickens in our own back yard, that coop after coop of chickens would get boring fast to Two Little Girls, but no!



I had to drag Chloe away from them. The kind folks at Bakersville were trying to close up for the day, and my daughter was still cooing softly to a cage of banties, telling them how pretty they were. She left that day utterly smitten, determined to own at least one pair of banties next spring.

Upstairs in one of the shops is a Seed Museum.


Seed catalogs, packets, advertisements and other memorabilia from years gone by. Truly, the folks at Bakersville possess an extreme love not just for gardening, but for the history of it. The girls dragged me through faster than I'd have liked, but it was fun to see all this history collected into one place - and there couldn't be a more fitting place for it.

I am so glad we had the time to stop at Bakersville. It was a lovely surprise to find it so close to our planned route. Some day we'll have to make it back and visit during one of their festivals, and see everything in action, but spending a quiet afternoon just exploring was a great experience in itself!



If you garden - or need inspiration to start - check our their website and ask for a catalog. It's the prettiest garden catalog you've ever seen, and you won't be able to stop yourself from ordering at least a few packets of something interesting to try.


More to come on the rest of our trip as soon as I make it through more pictures. :-)

Meet: The Toads

Living in the city is not conducive to activities like finding toads in one's garden. Between all the dogs, cats, weeds, dry lawns, and concrete, cities just don't make good toad habitat.

So we decided to import some.



Meet Hopsy and Giant Joe, two toads the girls caught at their grandma's house last night. We brought them home in quart-sized yogurt containers and set them free in the cold frame.

Of course, they weren't in the cold frame when we woke up this morning. But as I was harvesting garlic this evening (a long-overdue task) Hopsy leaped out from under my hand and scared the bejeezus out of me, as toads are wont to do. Giant Joe was nearby - finding both toads still in the garden made the girls quite happy.

We wanted them to know they are welcome and encourage them to stay and live here (as opposed to going next door and being eaten by the neighbor's chickens*) so we made them little toad houses.



Small flower pots, decorated with flat glass marbles (because we decorate just about everything around here,) and buried a bit. It gives the toad a dirt floor, shelter from the heat of the day, and the terra cotta stays damp and cool, which toads like. Of course, black widows also like dark and damp areas, so maybe we're just encouraging poisonous spiders to come live in our garden. We'll see.
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*My neighbor clearly does not value her tomato plants as much as I do. Either that, or her chickens haven't found them yet... or she hasn't caught them. Regardless, her ten chickens still roam her yard freely. I'm a control freak, and I love ripe tomatoes that haven't been pecked to death by chickens. My chickens have a lovely little fenced yard now, and are allowed to run free only when I'm there to watch them and chase them from the garden.

Potting Up

I love listening to my daughters talk to the seedlings in the basement. They talk to our baby plants the way most people would talk to a baby human, all high-pitched and squeaking and cooing.


"Oh, hello there little baby plant. How are you doing today? Oh look at you, getting so big and strong!"


"I'm going to give you a new home today, little tomato plant, because you are soooo big now."



"Here you go. This is your new home. Are you cozy in there? Such a good little tomato plant you are."



"Now, hold very very still, and I'm going to give you more soil, so your roots can grow bigger and stronger. There you go, now you're all set. Good little tomato plant, you keep growing now, okay? And some day we will put you in our garden and you can see what it's like to live outside like a big, grown-up tomato plant. Won't that be exciting, little tomato plant?"

Fresh Dirt.

All spring and summer long, my girls have patiently awaited this:



For the garden to be done, for it to be cleaned out, and for Daddy to till it all under. For permission to dig like crazy without having to worry about where something is planted, what might be growing, or compacting the soil.

One is building a mountain. The other is digging a burrow in which to hibernate all winter. When she gets really restless sometime in January, I'll send her outside to hibernate in her burrow for awhile.


Not even exaggerating, they spent all day yesterday and much of the day today outside diggin' in the dirt. In fact, school work got done at record speed, because they knew as soon as they were done they could go dig.

Sadly, it's all about to end: they're calling for snow tonight. :::sigh:::

Garden Pictures

Because garden pictures make me happy...

"Mommy? I want to eat this pepper."

"You can't just eat a pepper, sweetheart. It's not
like an apple."
"Okay, then. Maybe you can. Is it good?"
"Mmmmm Hmmm."
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The girls planted beans this year, and they're growing out of control. I put an old sunflower stalk in their garden for the beans to grow on. It finally snapped in half under the weight of them. Now, it's the perfect height for little girls to do their own bean harvesting again.

C'mon over to our house, where we garden in our underwear.

"Mommy. I found a really big bean!"

This time of year makes for some enormous vegetables - the ones that managed to hide long enough that they just keep growing and growing until we finally find them.

Even the sunflowers are huge this year, almost up to the phone lines.
Funny how kids just love anything that grows to be enormous.
"Mommy? This carrot has flowers."
"Ew, don't eat that. It won't taste very good."
Aside from the thick core down the middle, she did end up eating it all.

I think I'm going to stop making dinner. They'd probably be more content to sit in the garden and eat whatever they can reach off the vines.

Kid's Gardening - The Full Circle

I was reading through other KinderGardens blogs the other day, and came across this sweet post from Mommy Topics where she talks about how as a "silly city girl" she was surprised that when she went to plant her garden, the pea seeds were just dried up peas, the pumpkins seeds were just... pumpkin seeds, and the sunflower seeds were plain ol' sunflower seeds. I had to laugh, but not at her. No, I remember quite well when I was surprised by the same thing when I started planting my first garden. I, too, remember that light bulb moment when I finally understood why they called it the "birds and the bees" talk. I should've been about eleven when I figured that out. I was twenty three.

What I'd like to know is how on earth did any of us manage to graduate elementary school without this basic knowledge? And sadly, I think you could ask most people what a pea seed looks like and they'd probably be stumped. We all know that plants come from seeds, but most people just figure seeds come from little Burpee packets in the store. Until I started gardening, I always did.

That's the beauty of home school. Seeds are no longer a mystery in our house.

Last year, we saved lettuce, pumpkin, marigold and sunflower seeds. We planted all but the pumpkin (ran out of room), and this year we're seeing the circle completed as each of those seeds is now a thriving plant in the garden.

This year, we're adding spinach seeds to our repertoire.



It's something of an adventure to see how each plant matures and goes to seed, and collecting seeds is different for each type of plant.


There are certainly more efficient ways of seed saving (rather than scattering dried leaves and chaff everywhere) but doing it this way makes it possible for even the Littlest One to get involved.

If you're interested in saving seeds from heirloom vegetables in your garden, there are plenty of books and internet guides on the subject. And, come next spring, you can give your Small Ones some colored pencils and envelopes, then fill the envelopes with seeds they saved themselves - they make a lovely May Day gift!

Kid's Gardening - I Believe

For the Kinder-garden Series, Kim over at Inadvertent Farmer asked us to write this week about what we believe. When it comes to the garden, there are a lot of things I believe in!

I believe that red, ripe tomatoes are the greatest treat the garden has to offer.



I believe that babies grow best in gardens.



Between the local news articles and the thousands of baby grasshoppers I have feasting on my lawn, I believe the story of the grasshopper plague that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about.

I believe that one should always be mindful of whether or not they suffer from a... ahem... "plumber's crack", but that it is especially important in the garden - otherwise, one might end up with mosquito bites in said crack, and this is a very uncomfortable experience. Trust me.

But most of all:

I believe gardening is 10% know-how, 10% luck, and 80% faith. I'm not so good with the faith part, but my kids? They amaze me.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time planting and growing carrots. I make a sort of "seed tape", I fight with the spring wind while I lay them out, carefully spritz them with water, cover them delicately with exactly 1/4" of soil, mulch, and water three times a day for three weeks until they sprout.
I give a small handful of carrot seeds to each of my girls, they walk over to their garden, sprinkle them generously in the area they'd like them to grow, and then they walk away. Three weeks later, their carrots have sprouted and are growing faster than mine.


Me? I doubt nature from the beginning. I just don't have a strong enough faith in those little seeds to believe they're going to turn into food. I nurture and I coddle and I worry - as if anything I do will have an effect on this natural process!
My girls don't have a problem with the faith part at all - they know without a doubt that if you plant some beans in the dirt...

...that they will grow higher than little hands can reach.


They see no reason that a sunflower pulled out of the ground as a weed can't be replanted in a better spot and turn into a beautiful plant.

When tomato plants freeze and look completely dead, they don't give up on them, they rescue them from Mom's compost pile and replant them, only to find tomatoes growing on the plant a few months later.

For all that I do believe, this is a lesson my children will teach me - I need to believe in nature.