“Oh my God!” I have been telling my son not to say this, “It is gosh!”, but it is all that comes to mind to say about the weather the past few days. It has been so beautiful I have felt like I could drink the air, day after day. I have thrown myself into my garden work, forcing myself to stay and do one more task. As there is so much cleanup to do and the gift of these glorious days is not to be taken lightly knowing it could be a raw, damp and windy forty degrees until the snow flies.
I have been mulching, harvesting, pulling out and mentally planning for next year. I even went so far as to throw a few seeds in. My farmer friend looked up at me in shock when I told her this, but why not? I did reign myself in and plant only the most cold hardy plants- French Breakfast Radishes, Ice-Bred Arugula and a winter lettuce mix. With our greenhouses still unusable- one collapsed and being swallowed by weeds and the other still in a box. I had to do something, so I made my makeshift and pulled plastic over wire hoops stuck in the sides of a raised beds. Daylight hours are getting shorter and this more than lack of warmth will keep my plants from growing, but they will be ready to go when the days lengthen and don’t seem to mind stalling a couple of months.
We also harvested potatoes this weekend- a family favorite. Saturday morning we gathered together to dig for treasure, which is exactly what it feels like. Seeing a round real potato emerge amidst the clumps of dirt is like finding a gold nugget. “There’s one!” This year we grew French Fingerling (I love this potato with its bleeding pink insides), Sangre (red skin and white flesh), and Canela Russet. We are forever on the quest for the perfect russet because there is nothing like a baked potato with all the fixings. Canela Russet might just be the one. We also harvested sweet potatoes- a first for us this year and not a bad crop considering. There were one or two large tubers on each plant and many smaller ones. We did most things right, planting under black plastic in the best soil in the garden, but getting them in a few days earlier and hilling the bed before laying plastic and planting may have helped tremendously. Next year!
With potatoes drying in the sun for a couple of hours laid out over straw we took off for the mountains, a little leaf peeping and a puppet show was in store. We returned refreshed and gathered the potatoes together before the dew fell. They sit in the garage now drying further before I rub off some of the dirt and pack them away. Putting the harvest away is next. Then comes garlic planting with fingers crossed for a little more of that lovely sunshine.
