Land Clammin'

It's harvest time around the Beermuda Triangle. Get it before it freezes. Most stuff above ground is done (except for Kale and Chard). The underground stuff is doing well but it's time to dig the root crops before the ground freezes solid in late November/early December.

All my carrots, beets, some onions, most potatoes, are still in the ground. Parsnips are going to stay at least till Thanksgiving, and some will overwinter under mulch, plastic, and maybe a cold frame.

This saturday the Forties and the Crayons families took the young'ns out trick or treating(well the adults went trick or treating, the kids slept mostly) to a local farm/winery. Check them out... pretty cool huh?



Afterwards we stopped at the Casa de Crayons to let the kiddies rest inside and the manly men went outside to dig up potatoes. And drink beer and partake in congratulatory baby cigars.

This year was our first experiment with these above ground potato bins. In theory you can get 100lbs of potatoes from each bin. Before we started digging, it was time to work on the last of the Octoberfest from RAJAHADAB weekend. There's only a little left. About mid-way we took a break for more Octoberfest, and to check yields. Not even close to 100lbs. Granted it was a very bad year for potatoes around here. Too wet, too cold, too much blight.
Overall, a sinkful for the Crayons. Worth the effort... it's very satisfying to grow your own.
Last year I didn't do much better in traditional underground rows. I haven't dug my bins up completely, so I'll see how I did there. I did try Tire Taters and those did alright. (sorry no good pic) The real benefit of those was there's no digging. Just flip up the tire onto a tarp, and out rolls taters! I only got a couple tires tall, but that seemed to be okay because most of them were in the first tire. Next year I'm going to go back to a traditional trench/row, and the rest in tires. I didn't really like the towers because it was hard to fill the towers, and I didn't find any taters in the top couple tiers, only the bottom tiers.
I do still have one more experiment going in the garden, potato-wise. I filled the sides inbetween two rocks with some scrap landscaping timbers. Then, I planted the potato seed inbetween the rocks and filled with dirt inbetween the rocks. This is the bed where I planted the old potatoes from last year that had sprouted in the root cellar. I figured it was worth a shot.

Oh, this post is called Land Clamming because that is what it is like digging potatoes. Alot of fun with beer, ever shovel full of dirt could discover a hidden cache of taters. Just like clammin'.