Yukon Gold potatoes

Our 2026 Garden: potatoes are in, garlic is trimmed and I did none of this

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After yesterday’s trip to the ER, my daughters have been absolutely brutal about me not doing anything.

Which was probably a good idea. I have been feeling really good today, which means I probably would have overdone it, if they hadn’t!

My younger daughter has been focusing on the outside stuff and taking over in the garden. She’s been doing the morning cat feeding and this morning she did a deep watering of the garden beds – something that probably won’t be needed tomorrow, as there are thunderstorms in the forecast. Then she went out again to dig up all of the potatoes. Which turned out to be a harder job than it should have been. She couldn’t find where I’d left the garden fork, which still needed to have its broken handle replaced, so she was using a spade. When I came out to see how she was, she’d stopped for a break in the shade, having brought my walker out to use.

She found that thing so handy, she’s now considering buying one for herself!

When I found out about the lack of garden fork, I got the new handle I bought, a screwdriver and the garden fork over. Unfortunately, the Canadian Tire handle turns out to be smaller than the handle on the fork, so she wasn’t able to get it all the way on. We’ll need to reduce the circumference of the handle by a small amount – small enough that just some sand paper would do the job – to get it all the way on. So she had to finish using the spade.

Most of the Yukon Gold got rinsed off with a hose then brought inside. The first photo above is after her sister used some of it for supper. The second image is the last of the Yukon Gold with all of the Viking potatoes, curing on the screen.

I’m not too concerned about curing them fully. There aren’t a lot of them and they will likely be finished off rather quickly, much like the cabbage harvested earlier are being used up now.

In the future, we would need to plant a LOT more to have enough to last us the winter and, hopefully, have seed potatoes for the next year.

My daughter removed the garlic from the screen to make room for the potatoes, and then she trimmed the roots and dirt off the garlic, getting them ready to bring indoors.

We’ll be sure to selected the ones with the largest cloves to plant in October. We will have plenty to choose from. We’ve got the largest garlic we’ve grown yet, this year!

I joined my daughter again shortly before she finished with the garlic, so we were able to walk around a bit. I did harvest some bush beans planted around the Arikara squash, while she looked for any ripe Orange Currant tomatoes. Later on, I also harvested the one Prolific Long Neck squash that was large enough to make it worth picking.

While walking around, I couldn’t help but notice this.

The tree removal company has not been able to come out with their stump grinder, with the rain we had last week. From the looks of it, we’ll be getting thunderstorms and severe weather through Monday and Tuesday.

Which means the elm has had time to start trying to grow back already.

Elm is very difficult to get rid of, which is one of the reasons why my brother is willing to pay for stump grinding.

So the girls have been wonderful about getting things done that I would normally be working on, which is appreciated. Even feeling as good as I did, and as lovely it was to walk around the yard to get some fresh air and sunshine. it wasn’t all that long before I started feeling warning signs that I needed to get back inside to sit down. I still managed to get a few easy things done, though I had to sneak that in after my daughter went inside with the garlic. 😄

But that will be in my next post…

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: new seedlings, and chitting potatoes

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I have a lovely surprise when I turned the plant lights on this morning.

We have new growth!

The first (rather crappy) image above is of our very first sweet pepper seedling! I was starting to wonder if they were going to make it or not.

The pre-germinated Spoon tomatoes (in the next image), however, are growing like gangbusters! Almost every cell has at least one seedling emerging. Of the four varieties, these ones have been growing the fastest, and I’m quite impressed with them.

While I was out today, I picked up a new dial type thermometer for the portable greenhouse. With the old one showing temperatures like 50C/122F, and I thought for sure there was something wrong with it, since it didn’t feel anywhere near that got while I was in the greenhouse.

It looks like I was wrong!

In the next photo, you can see old and new thermometers, next to each other. The new one is on the right, and had been in there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

This time, however, it did actually feel very hot in there. Not sure why it didn’t, last time!

The last image is of our chitting potatoes. When I’ve done this in the past, I’ve laid them out on cardboard egg trays, cut side down to dry off. Recently, I watched and MI Gardener video on chitting potatoes, and he was laying them down on wood shavings to absorb the moisture. With I think would work better than the egg cartons. So this time, I used some older drain trays from seed starting kits – they have cracks in them and can’t hold water anymore, so they won’t be used for seed starting anymore. I put a layer of the stove pellets we use for litter on the bottom. As they absorb moisture, the pellets will swell up and start breaking apart into sawdust. I am thinking that will do a very good job of absorbing moisture so the cut surfaces will try off and “heal” better.

In the past, I set the trays of chitting potatoes up on our chest freezer in the old kitchen, which gets in the way of actually using the freezer. They are supposed to be set in warmth and light, so I moved things around and set them under the light next to the seedling tray with the warming mat. I had to lay them crosswise to fit, so half the potatoes weren’t getting as much light. That was solved by shifting the winter squash tray on the shelf above, so now the shop like that shine through the openings in the shelf. That should work fine, and the trays can be rotated, if necessary.

I checked on the pre-germinating seeds while I was at it. Still no sign of radicals.

As for the potatoes, I honestly don’t know where I’ll be planting them this year. They can be planted before the last frost date, though. I am expecting to plant these in one of the main garden area beds, and it will just depend on which one I can get ready yet. We hit 15C/59F today, and tomorrow we’re supposed to reach 17C/63F. I’m rather hoping that the snow covering the beds in the main garden area will finally melt away! Maybe then, I can lay some plastic down over some beds to help them thaw out faster.

I’m itching to get started on a lot of clean up out there, but some areas are just too muddy, while others are still covered in snow! At the very least, though, I should be able to start removing mulch from the winter sown beds that no longer have snow on them. Somewhere along the lines, I’ll figure out where the potatoes will go!

The Re-Farmer

I know what I’m doing tomorrow!

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Today I took my husband into the city for a medical appointment, but of course I had to check the kitties, first!

They are getting more and more active! We’re going to have to put them in something deeper, soon, so they don’t start crawling around the basement. At their size, there are too many things they can get into, that we couldn’t be able to get them out again! :-D

My husband and I left early enough to hit the post office, first, and ended up swinging by home again to drop things off. My husband had finally got his retroactive disability tax credit, and he used some of it to get a much needed new computer. Not something we wanted sitting in the van while we were in the city!

His appointment went well, though the drive was quite painful. It was for some tests in Nuclear Medicine, in the same hospital as the cardiac clinic. I was not allowed to come in with him, though. We arrived early, as is our habit, and I expected to have lots of time to walk around on a beautiful day, playing Pokemon Go. They must have taken him in early, because he was done much faster than I expected. Which is a nice change, even if the reasons for it are not to nice. :-/

His computer was not the only thing to arrive in the mail. I got a parcel I was expecting to come in tomorrow.

My Yukon Gem potatoes have arrived!

Which means I need to get them planted right away. Looking at the forecasts, tonight we’re supposed to reach 0C (32F), and that’s the coldest it’ll get overnight from now on.

I had been thinking about where and how we would plant the potatoes. With our rock hard soil in most places, I decided to go with a completely new and different method from what I’m used to. Here are some videos about what I am going to try.

The only thing is, I don’t have hay, nor was any available. I just have straw. I hope it will do as a substitute. I’ve seen other articles and videos that used straw, so I think it should.

With this in mind, I made use of the frames from the goat catching pen we’d made. The long sides are roughly 8 ft x 4 ft. A perfect garden bed size. So I am using them to mark out where I want to put the potatoes.

I will remove them, after I’ve finished covering the seed potatoes. For the 6 pounds of potatoes I have, this should be enough. I soaked the areas thoroughly, and will soak them again tomorrow before we start again. We are expecting some rain tomorrow (I hope!), but it won’t be much. By Sunday, we are supposed to hit 21C!! (70F) so I want to make sure it’s all thoroughly covered and watered before the heat hits.

We are also going to have to watch out for the Potato Beetle!

He kept us company while we started on the future potato beds.

I had considered setting them up where we’d covered with straw last year, as I am sure we won’t be having as many squash to transplant as I had hoped. There’s still a possibility that more seedlings will come up before the end of the month, so I figured I may as well just go off to one side, instead.

How well this works will help us decide what to do as we increase the amounts and varieties of potatoes we grow in the future. If we can get a good crop, without having to plow or till this hard, rocky ground, that would be really awesome!

The Re-Farmer