Good morning everyone! I can hardly believe July is already gone....
I spent last month replacing the old fence between my neighbor and I. Cecil 80 years old and his wife is in her seventies, and we’ve talked for years about replacing the old fence, and after the 4th of July we got started. Cecil was out there helping me dig the post holes and get the framing started. We also both hauled a big load of the old debris from the demolition to the dumpster. We had a great time working together on this project, and I think we both kept each other from over-doing...
On the gardening front, we’ve been enjoying summer squash, tomatoes, onions, cabbage and early potatoes. I had a couple of Yukon Gold potatoes that started to sprout, so I cut them up and poked them into one of the beds off of the patio as an afterthought. They started yellowing this week so I dug them up and got about ten pounds of very nice potatoes, along with a bunch of little new potatoes that we’ve been eating for a couple of days.
I roasted a bunch of potatoes on the grill the other night along with some red pepper, yellow zukes and onion. I tossed everything with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, then grilled them until they were done and starting to toast. The Missus made a roasted potato salad out of it with a touch of horseradish in the dressing....amazing!
I’ve already picked a couple of enormous spaghetti squash and have several more forming up. My beans are looking very healthy and should be flowering in another couple of weeks.
Speaking of flowering, my potato bed has been going nuts. The plants have been flowering like crazy for over a month, and the foliage is very healthy. These are all late bearing potatoes so I keep them watered so they can spud-up. I’m confident of harvesting a couple of hundred pounds of four different kinds of spuds from that bed this Fall....we shall see....
The few sweet potato plants that survived our cold Spring are thriving now; lots of foliage on them and considering the quality of the soil they are in and the depth of the bed, I have big expectations of a very nice yield of sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving...
I pruned back the old canes on my red raspberries, and have been reconfiguring the trellis so I don’t bump my head on it every time I go in there. I’ll be out there this weekend tying up the new canes for next year’s crop. We had so many this year we couldn’t use them all...so the chickens got lots of berry treats....
My water tank has been working out extremely well. I’m down to about 120 gallons right now and am doling out the water as needed. The forecast is calling for rain on Monday into Tuesday, so there’s a great chance to recharge the tank if it rains enough.
That’s it for me, and I hope your summer was worth waiting for. It sure is here.
Cheers!
You are a lucky man to have Cecil as a fence building partner.
Is it too late to add more soil to my potato bed? The above part os the plants are not yellowing, although they are a little brown around the edges of the leaves and they are flopping over. Can I still add a couple of bags of soil to that bed (it is a raised bed and it’s not full of soil)? My only previous experience rowing potatoes has been in bags.
Great report! What Sunset zone are you in? Eureka Ca is zone 19...