Potatoes, Onions, and Fall Crops

It's hard to believe it is late July and time to be seriously thinking about fall crops. I started the broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and lettuce this week. I started them indoors so they could get a good start in the cooler weather of inside before I move them out later in the year. There realy is not much to see here. Just a tray of dirt. I did label them with strips of milk cartons so I would know which plants were which.

Potatoes

I also put the potatoes in the ground. Confession to make, these were potatoes that I purchased at the store. You are not supposed to do that because of disease. Unfortunately there were no local nurseries that had any fall seed potatoes. One I called even said they can't get them anymore. I had to go to several grocery stores to find a bag of potatoes that had some good eyes on them. I cut the eyeing potatoes up and put them on a plate to scab over.
To plant them I dug a hole for each that was about 10 inches deep. Then put a piece of potato in and only filled the hole about half way. Potatoes need to be hilled several times and the first hilling will be filling the hole the rest of the way. As a side note, there were lots of roots in the soil as I was digging the holes. I tried to not break the larger roots. Overall I planted three squares of potatoes with two plants per square. With potatoes you can plant 1,2, or 4 plants per square. The fewer the plants the larger the potatoes. I thought 2 was a good compromise.

Potatoes ready to plant

In the hole. look at all the roots.

Covered up.

Cucumber Trellis

I have needed to put in a trellis for the cucumbers for awhile, but I have not been able to figure out the best way to do it. The trellis for the peas was okay, but it did not work as well as I would have liked and all the peas ended up sliding their twine to one side. I decided to go with cattle panel like on the tomatoes. We also have cucumbers growing up cattle panel in the main garden and it has worked very well. I attached the panel with wire. It had to be mounted under the t-posts because the tomatoes were already on top of the middle t-post.

Harvest

To plant the potatoes I pulled the rest of the carrots in those squares. I have been pulling them as they grow. I pulled about 16 carrots. most were a good size, but there were a few realy small ones that I did not even keep long enough to take a picture of. After removing the tops they weighed 0.94 lbs. That about wraps up the carrots for the year. There are a few more growing around the garden where the odd seed fell. If any of them turn out to be good I will update the numbers.

I picked the first squash of the year. it was a little small, but ready. It weighed about a quarter pound.

The onions have cured and were ready to be cleaned. There was one rotten onion so I threw that out. So out of 18 planted we have 16 usable onions weighing 4.77 lbs. Some have fat necks and will need to be used soon. (I have already eaten one.) The rest can store for awhile until I am ready to use them.

Onions before cleaning.

After cleaning. There were several double bulbs that I broke apart to clean.

The tomatoes are still going. I picked another another 24 tomatoes (15 full size and 9 cherry) for 3.52 lbs.

Other Garden News

A couple of other things to mention about the garden:

We have a couple of watermelons starting to grow. They are about the size of a quarter now.

There are 4 or 5 fruits starting to grow on the egg plant. They are about the size of a quarter too.

The peppers are finally starting to set fruit. We have probably a dozen small peppers on the three plants.

I pulled out four of the six bean squares. They were not doing anything. The two squares I left had flowers still on the plants so I left them.

I have doubled the water. While the ground was slightly moist I figured it could be wetter. The peppers were looking ever-so-slightly wilted in the afternoon and the watermelon is starting to fruit and it needs water. I had been running a single watering cycle for one hour at 5AM. I added another hour at 1PM so the plants would get another drink in the heat of the day.

Eggplant

Little Watermelons

Beans before I pulled them