Indoor Potato Experiment Ends
Greenhouse Winter Potato Growing Experiment Jan.1, '09 - May 4, '09
Four months may seem about the right timing for a successful potato harvest, the number of days for harvest ranging from 70 to 135 (according to The Wood Praire Farm in Maine, which is in no way responsible for this potato comedy. They are lovely growers of seed potatoes already planted outside. We'll see how those turn out in approximately 90 days.)
First mentioned on Feb.11 in the post Greenhouse Potatoes, this experiment was to see if seed potato would be able to last out the warmish winter until planting time by growing in a deep greenhouse bed. Was the experiment successful? That would depend if success was based solely on harvest or by the relative health of the plants and the carefree nature in which I'd wished they had grown.
Summer of '08 was my first potato planting, so I am unfamiliar with their ways. Now I realize that what I'd thought of as dread disease in the greenhouse plants may be just the natural dying off of mature plants. Are you experienced? Please let me know your thoughts.
They looked at first (well after the frost die off in their first weeks of life), to be marvelously healthy, albeit planted too closely together. It was an urgent "save the seed" movement, rather than careful planning of optimal growth conditions. This photo is from March 13th.
Then came the little disfigurements of disease
and depredation.
Then total disaster as the aphids increased, thanks to the ants.
Then it seemed that the plants were truly dying. Of course I never thought to count the days to see if perhaps all was on divine schedule after all. I used nitrogen therapy to try to bolster the leaves. That worked nicely for a couple of days, but alas, just more and more wilt.
Also, I was hoping to see some flowers. I'd read that the potatoes are reaching maturity when the plant flowers. I suppose all its flower-making energy was going into the aphids and I didn't receive the sign to start digging for potato treasures.
Finally today I decided I couldn't stand to see the dead foliage any more, cut the dead branches of one plant off and gingerly dug. First I pushed away the aphid ridden soil so it wouldn't get on the potatoes, then dug up ...
These beautiful, if small, clean and healthy looking blue skin potatoes. There's even enough left of the seed and stems to plant again, if there's room in the garden.
Although the original idea of these was to serve as seed potato, I've ordered many others from Maine. The brothers of the seed planted in the Greenhouse spent the rest of the winter in a friend's crawl space, cooler than mine. It turns out that those seed did wonderfully well and are now ready to plant. I hope that its dry enough tomorrow to do just that. They have wonderfully grown up eyes.
What to do with the new potatoes shown above? If they are not to be used as seed, what then? Hmmm, yummmm, with butter.
We'll know when we eat them, if the winter greenhouse potato experiment was indeed, a success.
May all your experiments bring out the beauty, joy and resiliency of life.
Ladybug Larvae LOVE (eating) Aphids
Some Ladybugs were shooed out the door, some into the vacuum. Then a neighbor reminded me that these indoor pests EAT APHIDS. The rest of them were quickly swept right downstairs to the greenhouse, and deposited onto the potato leaves.
.
The Beginning: Healthy happy potato leaves with happy healthy aphids.
Asian Ladybug Beetles on patrol on the potato leaves.
Note aphid farmer (ant) on leaf in lower center part of photo.
Many more ants began to take up residence. I used dry corn grits scattered on the ground and leaves. The idea is that the ants feed on the dry grits and somehow as the grits expand in their body moisture, it explodes them. Hopefully (for sadistic gardeners) the ants take the grits back to their Queen and the grits kill her too. End of ant colony and their tended crop of aphids (in theory).
Undiagnosed disease or other destruction of potato leaf, obviously pretty worn out by continued aphid predation.
Enter intrepid, wonderful hungry Ladybug beetle larvae. They have nothing to do but eat and grow bigger. Unlike their adult version, they can't go flying off. So they walk and eat and eat and I hardly see any aphids on the leaves anymore. Well, there are plenty more on other greenhouse plants.
So gently and tenderly, I've been moving a few to the Carrot leaves nearby which are aphid-inundated. Hopefully they'll find the Salsify next to that which is like an aphid magnet. I'd like to find a way to get the larvae to some of the other plants which are in pots in the greenhouse that need the larvaes' help - but I am cautious about trapping the guys inside a plastic pot. They may not be able to move to get more food elsewhere when they need it.
Kudos to you. Ladybug larvae, you are doing a wonderful job!
Some of the plants where the infestation started were looking pretty bleak.
I don't see any aphids or LadyBug Larvae in the outside garden yet. I'm sure that its too cold and too early in the season for them. I'm just so grateful that when the pests awoke early for the outside world, in the greenhouse warmth, their natural predators also awoke to enjoy the aphid feast.
This proves that it is true, in the natural system of gardening,
if you provide the feast, the guests will come.
So if we wait long enough with a pest in our midst,
a predatory species will be drawn to the garden buffet.
I wish that it always worked as well as in this instance. Remember, I stacked the deck with extra ladybugs. And it wasn't them, but their offspring who are doing the work. Therefore, this year I stocked up on wholesome "organic" type bug remedies, sprays and powders. We'll see how well I'm able to apply them as the season progresses.
May the beneficial insects come to your garden,
even if just for hors d'oeuvres - so you won't have to be overrun by pests
to be helped by Nature's Balancing Mysteries.
Salsify Flower, biennial seed saving project
It is living in the greenhouse as part of a seed saving experiment. As a biennial, seed can only be saved after it flowers, is pollinated, makes seed and has not been exposed to other like-species of plant.
An intense schedule of getting outdoor beds ready has kept me from my books. It would have been smart to research in advance what to do with this flower once it blooms. Even now, I sit before the fire with this computer on my lap, too tired out to get up and look it up. If the experiment goes no farther, still the joy of looking into this flower has ben worth the effort of caring for it.
An amazing color to greet me today. March is lovely, but there is no natural source of bright purple in my yard. Others may have crocus to jump start the eye's ability to process brilliant pallet of joy, but this is the first, this year for this gardener.
On a tall stalk, it opened facing the sun, and then remained in that position during the day.
In the late afternoon, it closed up again. I don't know what will be next.
Three days ago, the bud looked like this.
Salsify and carrot (above) on 2/6/09. These are root vegetables which are both biennial. I took the best roots that were harvested in the Fall. Instructions say to keep them in a root cellar all winter, and plant them again in the spring for them to grow tops and flower. Not having a good root cellar, and not being good at following directions, I took them into the deeper greenhouse beds and planted them there, open to whatever happens.
The Salsify is big and bushy now, as are the invisible carrot tops right next to them. I promise, I will read up on the seed saving technique for them. Everything I've read says that salsify seeds are viable only for one year. I'm hoping to be able to save most seeds, to grow or to share.
The root itself is close to a white color with a very delicate flavor, and stringy roots all along it. I didn't love the taste that much, but it doesn't stop the pseudoscientist within from attempting an experiment.
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In the climate change department, I noticed today that the quince blossoms are opening. Checking the digital record from last year, there were quince blossoms on 4/5/08 . They are at the same stage today, 3/19/09!
Wishing for you, in your garden, that the climate of Joy only Grows Brighter!
Culprit! Grubs Snatch Spinach in Greenhouse Beds
Who was the culprit who ...
Made holes in the greenhouse soil bed?
Made holes and trails in the greenhouse soil bed?
The spinach looked lovely on February 13. I could not figure out what was making these holes. I dug and wondered.
The post on Zaatar on February 14, came about through digging it up, in the hopes of finding the culprit in that process.
I'd been seeing a lot of crickets and cricket young in the greenhouse, moving into and out of the soil near the very thick foliage of the zaatar. I thought maybe the crickets were the problem and the zaatar was their hiding place. I did not find any cricket creche in the soil. But come to think of it, I did find and destroy a couple of grubs then. I didn't consider that they may be the source of the holes. Not being familiar with the growth rate of spinach, I didn't know if it was growing slower than it should have. Now, I believe that even in the winter light, it might have developed faster if its roots had not been eaten away. It is kind of like spending principle - it doesn't leave much for later meals. But I'm getting ahead of my story.
Below, on Feb 19, before harvesting, the spinach was as good as it got. I also had to trim it back to almost nothing as aphids spread to that bed.
After the spinach was trimmed back I knew things had gotten way out of hand with my mystery bugs.
Spinach is near the top of the photo below. Some of the little ones survived and began to green again. However, many of them just disappeared, right through into the hole that they had been growing in. Then one dear one with new leaves on it seemed to be sinking deeper into the soil than it had been. Gingerly I reached to see if it would pull back up into place. Alas, the whole stem came up, nibbled away from any roots it might have had.
That does it! Forget the all the other jobs that need to be done!
1. Put amendments on the new area opened up for bramble transplant.
2. Cover the new flower garden area with paper and straw so weeds don't take over.
3. Set up the new potato patch.
4. Process finished batch of compost.
5. Process finished batch of worm castings.
6. Start more seeds!
7. Tear and soak newspaper for new worm bedding.
It's time to deal with this urgent problem NOW.
The Exploration
I removed the herbs that had been growing in that bed (zaatar and french tarragon) and potted them up. Also the remaining spinach and lettuce plants from half the bed were potted. The soil was combed through, all the worms were saved. I wondered if the destroyers could have been the red wigglers that were dropped into the bed. Did they run out of debris to eat and were they starting on the good plant roots? It seemed far fetched, but I kept exploring.
There had been an explosion of sow bugs on one of the shelves, but as far as I knew, they only ate rotted stuff. And I'd seen (and squished) only three or four as I moved all the soil, digging through the bed.
The answer appeared as a bug that has the same shape and size as the holes and tracks I'd seen. In fact, when I watched them march on the concrete floor after being removed from the soil home in which they were illegally squatting, their movement pattern did seem to match the form of the tracks. Ah ha. Gotcha!
And I kept getting them. About 25 large hungry grubs came out of half of the four foot by seven foot bed with 10" of soil. Tomorrow I have to get into the other half, pot up the two chard and many lettuces that are doing well there (so far) and clear out the grubs that have been making holes in that part of the bed too.
How did they get in there? Why didn't they show up earlier? Can I keep them from "reseeding"? The soil has been there for almost a year. I didn't see them as the soil went in. These are questions that you the reader may be able to answer. Or more research in the grub life cycle may answer them.
As the other beds get harvested out, I will have to comb through them as well.
This discovery leaves me feeling a tad more grateful to the armadillos and skunks that paw through my yard eating grubs.
Below is one of the grubs on the concrete floor before his execution. So much of gardening, here in the buggy Ozarks, seems to be about killing, it is spiritually painful that my gardener's instinct and what seems to be necessary is killing.
Oh, just squash it.
Ick.
Drying Zataar Herb
How does one dry an herb that tends to disconnect from the stem while drying?
How lovely the Zataar herb bunches, tied with twine on the cedar table.
The twine is suspended from a ceiling hook.
Zataar bunch is hung from the twine. If it slips, the double knots in the twine should hold it up.
Hanging one below the other the zataar becomes a garland.
Below you see a basket lined with linens, to catch the falling dried leaves.
Dried or fresh zataar on goat cheese. Very delicious.
Zataar of the Oregano Family
The leaves are a bit thicker, broader and stronger. One little plant survived years of bad potting to come to thrive in the greenhouse, even through the winter.
Here it is in its fullness, next to the spinach in the shallow bed.
The zataar plant was growing too boisterous and thick and needed to be repotted. Someone else might like a taste of Zataar, so I decided to tame it into eighteen 2.5 inch pots. It however, decided that it would not like to be limited to that. We did cooperate.
A careful harvest was accomplished into a half-bushel basket. Just a day after Garden Club. Two days earlier, these rootable cuttings would have made lovely gifts. Sorry.
And the plant is still entrenched in the bed, ready to expand again, with fresh worm castings to feed it.
Next posting will be on how the zataar was hung to dry.
There are nineteen 2.5 inch pots of Zataar with roots getting ready to be shared when Spring comes. After they grow a bit and fill out I’ll show you a picture. Right now, they are a bit ragged looking.
Making the Beds, Tucking in Onions
We began to build this greenhouse, after studying what the “right” way was, just the best way that we could. We had a Southern exposure, a space and we had materials. So, all was put together to offer a “well lighted place” to nurture plants, and to be nurtured in their presence (and flavor!) Oh, savor the flavor.
We added two large beds, surrounded by cedar wood. The garden’s wonderful soil, amended by what seemed right went in. Two really deep beds, about 2 feet high, connect to the soil, ground, strata of gravel, whatever you’d call it. Those beds were also amended and left on their own, looked like the right side of this photo.
I had small delicate strands of onion, leek and chive seedlings to put in, and imagined they would be mangled and destroyed by the rubble. So I utilized some tools which were ordered from Bountiful Gardens (www.bountifulgardens.org). They are kind resourceful helpful folks there, who spread the gospel of growing good healthy food around the world. The soil sifter resting in the white pan below comes through them. It helped me smooth out the top inch or so of the bed until it looked like the left side of the photo.
So smooth, so soft, a well made bed.
Below is what I used to sift the soil. The two buckets on the top received the detritus, stones and rough stuff on the left.
Donations for the compost on the right.
The plastic spade pressured the soil through the seive, into the pan.
Then the kinder gentler soil was replaced on top of the bed, and smoothed out.
Above, the sieve is used to prepare the worm castings. A small colony of worms worked for over a year. The ones that survived my learning curve of how to care for them, created a couple of bags of nutritive castings soft enough for the tender seedlings. I knew that the onionettes would need the food value of the castings, so I made tiny channels in the bed, filled with castings and laid them in.
There were about 200 seedlings.
We like to cook with onions. How many onions do we use in a week? (4) In a year? (4 X 52). Which varieties will store well? How many of each kind? Perhaps a sweet onion that doesn’t store will be able to grow in the greenouse over next winter.
So how many to plant now? We have leeks, chives, long keeping browns, short keeping sweet reds, and vidalia style sweet onions. We’ll see what happens.
Some of the onion seedlings were really too small to transplant, but the job took two days as it was. I really didn’t want to put off finishing it. Two days of bending over the bed, arduously putting the tiny things in and gently covering them.
I used a wonderful tool, also from Bountiful Gardens (www.bountifulgardens.org). It is just a slender curved piece of stainless steel, it is perfect for working in small dimensions with delicate roots and fragile stems. I couldn’t figure out what it was in the catalog, but trusted them when they said it was useful. Indeed. I’ll put a photo of it in tomorrow.
The seedlings that didn’t have enough leaf/stem to stick out of the soil were placed under the soil. I’ve been waiting to see them push through. Seems that a few new onion stems have come through, but I’m still waiting on more.
What I really like about the onion bed - it is so simple to differentiate the weeds from the onion family. If it has any bit of a circular leaf, out it goes. If it has the tip of a grass stem (like a lance or arrowhead point), out it goes. Only the smooth cylindrical shaft, without ornamentation remains in this bed.
Planting the seedlings was harder than putting in onion sets. The little ones are so tender.
These plants will go in the garden when the soil and temperatures are right, and when they are pencil thick and ready to transplant. Seems like it will take years for that to happen. They are growing quite slowly. I’m told that’s normal for onions.
The photo above was taken on 1/22/09 just after they were transplanted.
Below, was photographed on 2/12/09. You might see multiple and slightly thicker leaves .

Also, notice how easy it is to tell which little green growths are weeds!
I love making my fingers into tweezers and excising the little weeds,
pulling straight up so their roots slide out without disturbing the onions.
Greenhouse Potatoes
For a change, let’s start with the finished product, circa August 18, 2008
Some shiny purple potatoes in a colander. These were very good to eat. We ate potatoes. We had potato soup. Some is still in the freezer and it is delicious. We tried drying them in the dehydrator - not worth it.
The ones we didn’t wash and didn’t eat, which looked like they might make good seed for ’09 were stored in a box in the basement. In the beginning of ’09, I noticed that they were going to seed and wouldn’t make it until Spring. I took some to a friend who has a cooler spot, and some I tried to save, by planting right away in the deeper bed in the greenhouse. In a few weeks, one or two came up and were promptly killed by too little heat on a really cold night.
I’d been told that if the potato plant is not too big when its frozen, it will come back. And without any special incantations (besides the usual loving pep talk I always give the plants) look, it is growing back!
Yes, that very rough looking ground is in the greenhouse bed. After I remove the potatoes I’ll take care of that. Preparing for the onion bed taught me how to do that. (Details on another post.)
It is possible that new potatoes and seed for the garden will be ready on time for planting on April First.
Snow, Ice & Darkness
Ventured out this morning during a break in the clouds to see how the greenhouse was doing. Surprisingly I had to shovel the snow away to open the door. We never would have designed like that up North, but didn’t even think of it while building here. No problem, a little chopping and shoveling away and I got through the crack in the door.
There was a little one, likely a mouse who scampered down the hill, looking to get into the door and had to run along the wall. I hope he found shelter under the outside steps. Unlike him, I was able to get in.
Inside was darker than I expected, even with inches of snow completely covering the roof. The temp was a “toasty 40 degrees”. (This quote is from an old movie shown on PBS made by a master builder/woodsman of building a cabin and living in the way back wilderness of Alaska. His words described the inside of the cabin when the fire was burning during winter. I like to compare his strength and inner warmth to my own softee nature. He didn’t even have down, gortex or silk longjohns!)
Dark Day in the Greenhouse. And this is with the sun shining a bit!
Lettuce seeks the sun, straight up for just about enough light
However, it is not bright and warm enough to bring the seedlings back into the greenhouse.
I’m glad that I didn’t plant the next round of seeds yet. Think I’ll wait a little while.
