Quarantine Vegetable Gardens

[zecats]

Months ago, I planted out potatoes in three pots. They grew, then flowered, and I thought yesterday how I really must harvest them soon. So today, I did just that. Care to guess how many potatoes grew? Zero. Zip. Zilch. De nada. A big, fat diddly-squat. I was so disappointed. Talking to my Dad this afternoon, he said sometimes that can happen with the supermarket ‘taters I had planted. He suggested I try with seed potatoes. I am tempted to just throw in the towel, and instead focus on the things I am good at, like tomatoes. Grr.

That's more than likely what I'll find if I go searching for a potato among the green leaves. Not really sure I want to eat whatever is growing there anyway. The squirrels frequent this part of the yard just below a fence and lord knows what they leave behind.

 

[mickey2942]

Yes, my pepper plant has yielded 2 tiny "cherry" peppers. I popped them in my mouth. That has been it.

 

[LadyL]

The secret ingredient to a really good gazpacho is to throw in a hard boiled egg when mixing all the ingredients. A good friend in Spain taught me that. Much better than adding day old bread which some recipes call for. I usually use 4 parts tomatoes to 1 part cucumber and green pepper each. Then I add garlic, extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar plus salt to taste. Simple but oh so good

we're vegan so no eggs so I would try it without IF I were to attempt making it
I don't know if I'm that brave

 

[LadyL]

Months ago, I planted out potatoes in three pots. They grew, then flowered, and I thought yesterday how I really must harvest them soon. So today, I did just that. Care to guess how many potatoes grew? Zero. Zip. Zilch. De nada. A big, fat diddly-squat. I was so disappointed. Talking to my Dad this afternoon, he said sometimes that can happen with the supermarket ‘taters I had planted. He suggested I try with seed potatoes. I am tempted to just throw in the towel, and instead focus on the things I am good at, like tomatoes. Grr.

I'm wondering when I should check my potatoes. I'm afraid there will be nothing too!

 

[Suglo]

we're vegan so no eggs so I would try it without IF I were to attempt making it
I don't know if I'm that brave

It’s super easy as long as you have a good blender. Just cut everything into pieces, throw into blender and blend for a minute or two. I do it in about three batches and then mix in a bowl but I make enough for a few days using about 5 pounds of tomatoes.

 

[JudgeJoe]

Reporting in...

SUCCESS: cantaloupes galore, basil, rosemary, purple peppers, salad greens, johnny jump-ups etc.

MIXED RESULTS: tomatoes awesome till July, then died out. Ditto for cucumbers. Nasturtiums did not like heat.

BOMB OUT: watermelons splitting on vine, sugarsnap peas yielded ONE pea- lol, corn an annual bust- but always plant anyway for fun. Brussel sprouts big & healthy foliage- no sprouts.

Anyone know how to solve my watermelon problem? Or Brussel sprouts? Or eradicate leaf-cutters?

It’s been a long, hot, odd summer. A few edible successes have been a small delight in the midst of covid, mask wars, politics, & a crowded work-at-home house. I hope y’all are well!

 

[155etta]

I'm wondering when I should check my potatoes. I'm afraid there will be nothing too!

After the first light frost.

 

[LadyL]

Reporting in...

SUCCESS: cantaloupes galore, basil, rosemary, purple peppers, salad greens, johnny jump-ups etc.

MIXED RESULTS: tomatoes awesome till July, then died out. Ditto for cucumbers. Nasturtiums did not like heat.

BOMB OUT: watermelons splitting on vine, sugarsnap peas yielded ONE pea- lol, corn an annual bust- but always plant anyway for fun. Brussel sprouts big & healthy foliage- no sprouts.

Anyone know how to solve my watermelon problem? Or Brussel sprouts? Or eradicate leaf-cutters?

It’s been a long, hot, odd summer. A few edible successes have been a small delight in the midst of covid, mask wars, politics, & a crowded work-at-home house. I hope y’all are well!

oh wow I would love to have cantaloupes

 

[LadyL]

After the first light frost.

thanks I was reading that it should be after the plants flower and turn yellow

 

[155etta]

thanks I was reading that it should be after the plants flower and turn yellow

Edit to add: Warning - Might be boring.

We're potato farmers in Idaho. I don't know what your climate is like but the plants will just naturally start to take a dive at the end of their growing cycle. Yellow, wither, and start to die. You can keep watering them lightly though. It's fine to leave them in the ground after the foliage looks dead and you probably should. They sort of "cure" in the ground and the skins toughen up. You really don't need to worry about digging them until a really hard frost is forecasted. They don't like that. They are about 80% water so a hard freeze turns them to mush, eventually. Stinky mush. So, so stinky.

Maybe you're not interested, but here's a little info. We grow around 500 acres of potatoes. We start getting ready to harvest our crop around the last week or so in September. If we've had a frost it usually kills the vines. If not, we have to spray on a chemical that kills the vines. Then we use a piece of equipment that beats the vines off (grinds them into pieces) so the long vines don't get tangled in the chains of the harvester or bind up on the drive lines of the trucks. Then we let them sit and "cure" for about 10 days in the ground so the skins toughen up. Potatoes get bounced along on a lot of chains and belts before they make it to storage so the skins need to be tough or they bruise and then ultimately rot. That's where the stink comes in. So, so gross. We start digging them out of the ground around the first week in October.

They are stored in a huge cellar and that big of a pile can generate heat so they have to go through a "sweat" period, where the field heat leaves the tubers. It puts the potatoes in dormancy and prevents sprouting during early months in storage. They need to be stored at about 40 degrees. Ideal conditions are ventilated, cool temperatures, high humidity, and no light. Our storage facilities are set up to create all these conditions. We harvest in October, store them, and sell them the next year in August. Usually. Hope I didn't bore you.

 

[Gardener1850]

Months ago, I planted out potatoes in three pots. They grew, then flowered, and I thought yesterday how I really must harvest them soon. So today, I did just that. Care to guess how many potatoes grew? Zero. Zip. Zilch. De nada. A big, fat diddly-squat. I was so disappointed. Talking to my Dad this afternoon, he said sometimes that can happen with the supermarket ‘taters I had planted. He suggested I try with seed potatoes. I am tempted to just throw in the towel, and instead focus on the things I am good at, like tomatoes. Grr.

Oh no, how disappointing! This is my first year attempting to grow potatoes so I really can't offer much advice. I tried to harvest one of my grow bags of red potatoes about a month ago and there were a bunch of tiny ones still attached to the vine roots and only 4 that were a size worth eating (about golf ball sized). I put the tiny ones back in the grow bag full of dirt and the vine actually continued to grow. So now I'm waiting until the very end of the season (October for me) and hoping the rest grow more potatoes than that first one. If they don't grow, I'll be disappointed, but I'll try again next year with a different method. If you really want to grow potatoes, then don't give up. Your dad may be right and you may have to buy seed potatoes where you live. For the US, I've read to only use certified organic potatoes grown as close to local as possible (if starting from grocery store potatoes).

I mostly planted seed potatoes from a garden store, but I also planted a few sprouted grocery store potatoes just to see what would happen. I like to do garden experiments and compare things like that. If I don't harvest anything from them this year, at least I'll have gained knowledge of what doesn't work. Another thing to keep in mind is that this could just be a bad year for potatoes in your area. One of my local farmers mentioned that this has been a bad year for them for their potatoes-- something about extreme temperature fluctuations and bad bug pressure. This was a bad year for me growing summer squash/zucchini, which is usually really productive and easy to grow for me. I just tell myself that there's always next year to try again.

 

[Gardener1850]

You are extremely ambitious. Giant kudos to you. My garden has been producing tomatoes and peppers, which I pretty much use up as I pick them. Ironically, pumpkin plants are sprouting all over the yard due to seeds from last fall's decorations. And DH threw out some potatoes a few months ago and they are sprouting above ground plants as well.

We are lucky enough to live near several road stands and also to live in the garden part of the Garden State (NJ), so there are plentiful fruits and veggies for us to buy, eat and freeze.

A large tree in our yard fell 2 weeks ago during the tropical storm that passed and just missed hitting my chicken coup full of tomato plants.
It did take out a back building though.

Thanks, I wish I were even more ambitious and already had the tomato sauce canned, LOL. My first wave of tomato plants are almost at an end but they are still giving me about a dozen tomatoes a day in various sizes. We can only eat so many tomato salads and sandwiches so I ended up freezing what we can't eat so they don't go bad. I have had to toss a few in the compost that got too ripe to eat.

Sorry to hear you had storm damage and lost a building. We got some very minor flooding in our basement this year due to tropical storms, and that has never happened before. Fortunately we were able to figure out where it came in and fix it ourselves (and nothing stored in the basement got damaged by the water). I'm ready for 2020 to be over!

 

[155etta]

Months ago, I planted out potatoes in three pots. They grew, then flowered, and I thought yesterday how I really must harvest them soon. So today, I did just that. Care to guess how many potatoes grew? Zero. Zip. Zilch. De nada. A big, fat diddly-squat. I was so disappointed. Talking to my Dad this afternoon, he said sometimes that can happen with the supermarket ‘taters I had planted. He suggested I try with seed potatoes. I am tempted to just throw in the towel, and instead focus on the things I am good at, like tomatoes. Grr.

Potatoes gain all their size in the last couple of weeks they grow. Russets need about 120 days. They spend two-thirds of that time growing foliage and setting blooms. As the foliage dies, the tubers gain all their size. That's why you should keep lightly watering, even as they're crashing. Don't dig til they look good and dead. They're also super heavy feeders and need a lot of fertilizer. Hope that helps for next year.

 

[LadyL]

Edit to add: Warning - Might be boring.

We're potato farmers in Idaho. I don't know what your climate is like but the plants will just naturally start to take a dive at the end of their growing cycle. Yellow, wither, and start to die. You can keep watering them lightly though. It's fine to leave them in the ground after the foliage looks dead and you probably should. They sort of "cure" in the ground and the skins toughen up. You really don't need to worry about digging them until a really hard frost is forecasted. They don't like that. They are about 80% water so a hard freeze turns them to mush, eventually. Stinky mush. So, so stinky.

Maybe you're not interested, but here's a little info. We grow around 500 acres of potatoes. We start getting ready to harvest our crop around the last week or so in September. If we've had a frost it usually kills the vines. If not, we have to spray on a chemical that kills the vines. Then we use a piece of equipment that beats the vines off (grinds them into pieces) so the long vines don't get tangled in the chains of the harvester or bind up on the drive lines of the trucks. Then we let them sit and "cure" for about 10 days in the ground so the skins toughen up. Potatoes get bounced along on a lot of chains and belts before they make it to storage so the skins need to be tough or they bruise and then ultimately rot. That's where the stink comes in. So, so gross. We start digging them out of the ground around the first week in October.

They are stored in a huge cellar and that big of a pile can generate heat so they have to go through a "sweat" period, where the field heat leaves the tubers. It puts the potatoes in dormancy and prevents sprouting during early months in storage. They need to be stored at about 40 degrees. Ideal conditions are ventilated, cool temperatures, high humidity, and no light. Our storage facilities are set up to create all these conditions. We harvest in October, store them, and sell them the next year in August. Usually. Hope I didn't bore you.

thanks - very interesting
I only have one container but I guess the timing would be similar

 

[PayrollNerd]

Edit to add: Warning - Might be boring.

We're potato farmers in Idaho. I don't know what your climate is like but the plants will just naturally start to take a dive at the end of their growing cycle. Yellow, wither, and start to die. You can keep watering them lightly though. It's fine to leave them in the ground after the foliage looks dead and you probably should. They sort of "cure" in the ground and the skins toughen up. You really don't need to worry about digging them until a really hard frost is forecasted. They don't like that. They are about 80% water so a hard freeze turns them to mush, eventually. Stinky mush. So, so stinky.

Maybe you're not interested, but here's a little info. We grow around 500 acres of potatoes. We start getting ready to harvest our crop around the last week or so in September. If we've had a frost it usually kills the vines. If not, we have to spray on a chemical that kills the vines. Then we use a piece of equipment that beats the vines off (grinds them into pieces) so the long vines don't get tangled in the chains of the harvester or bind up on the drive lines of the trucks. Then we let them sit and "cure" for about 10 days in the ground so the skins toughen up. Potatoes get bounced along on a lot of chains and belts before they make it to storage so the skins need to be tough or they bruise and then ultimately rot. That's where the stink comes in. So, so gross. We start digging them out of the ground around the first week in October.

They are stored in a huge cellar and that big of a pile can generate heat so they have to go through a "sweat" period, where the field heat leaves the tubers. It puts the potatoes in dormancy and prevents sprouting during early months in storage. They need to be stored at about 40 degrees. Ideal conditions are ventilated, cool temperatures, high humidity, and no light. Our storage facilities are set up to create all these conditions. We harvest in October, store them, and sell them the next year in August. Usually. Hope I didn't bore you.

I found this very interesting and thanks so much for helping us understand!

 

[mickey2942]

Forecast for snow next week. Maybe some plastic for the tomatoes can keep them from freezing.

 

[155etta]

Forecast for snow next week. Maybe some plastic for the tomatoes can keep them from freezing.

Oh no!

 

[PayrollNerd]

Forecast for snow next week. Maybe some plastic for the tomatoes can keep them from freezing.

Can you plug in a 100W light bulb nearby? We used to do that for our dogs in the winter. It lessoned the chill just a bit for them.

 

[mickey2942]

Can you plug in a 100W light bulb nearby? We used to do that for our dogs in the winter. It lessoned the chill just a bit for them.

I don't know, probably not. Maybe a blanket?

 

[PayrollNerd]

I don't know, probably not. Maybe a blanket?

I think I’d do both. Prop up a piece of sheeting to keep the frost at bay but add a blanket to keep the warmth in. Maybe some more experienced Gardner’s on here can recommend something.