March 12, 2015

Good morning, recently during one of our intermittent warming days before it was rudely interrupted by the next several cold days. I managed to putter around in the garden. Amazing as it was the soil was not toooo wet just only too wet. Emphasis on the number of “o's”. Something that I have observed is that we have really gotten some very deep chilling in the soil. This is due to all the melting ice we have gotten this year. In years past I have dug down 6 to 8 inches and a thermometer would read in the low to mid 50's.

Last fall when I buried some sweet potato fingerlings, I thought I was being cautious and buried them at 8 to 10 inches. For funzzies I thought I would dig down to the sweets and see how they were doing. I did not expect to see any sprouting but I really did not expect what I found. Granted I only dug up a portion (about 1/4) of this “seed bed” but about half of what I found looked to have suffered from too cold of storage conditions. Sweet storage is from 55 to 60 with 80 percent humidity. I wish I had a thermometer in the garden that day just to see how cool it was at that depth. I am sure that the soil temp was less than 50 degrees. How much below I do not know. Anyway more than half of what I examined looked like they were soft and once the soil temperature rises they will most likely rot. I do have one other bed that I have not checked on. This one is in one of the beds that I covered with greenhouse film and Agribon 70.

A side track observation deals with the chard and kale in this bed. Unlike the more traditionally covered chard /kale there was never any stem freeze cracks, which indicates that it was warmer in the greenhouse film/fabric bed. Soon I am going to take a look at the condition of these tubers.

I had mentioned that I had also started some sweet cuttings. Oh, more learning curve. I was afraid if I had them growing in the house all winter that they would be way out of control with growth. Looking back this would not have been a problem. As it stands I should get enough cuttings for one bed but not for the 3 beds. Each bed needs about 130 rooted cuttings.

Next year I will do things differently.. First for the mini tubers I will layer in sand inside a Styrofoam cooler with a top and put it under the house or in the coolest room in the house. And for the plants to make cuttings, Deb says she would be glad to have a sweet vine that could grow around her window at work. This plant would be several feet long and would make a lot of cuttings, and this vine would grow again.

I also mentioned that I had planted some small seed potatoes back in the the middle of November. Due to the exceptionally long extended warm fall we experienced up to Christmas, they had sprouted and emerged. I figured they would get burnt back and they did. I am finding as they reemerge that these will be very good sized plants with lots of nodes to produce potatoes. Time will tell once they are harvested whether this was a good thing or not.

Funny like sweet potatoes you can have all this wonderful thick full tops and think “boy howdy those vines have got to be loaded with spuds.” It was a few years back and a pocket gofer got into my Irish potato bed and destroyed it. Then proceeded to reek havoc in my sun choke bed. I drew the line at the sun choke bed and took him out. All the time thinking I saved the sweet bed that was right next to the sun chokes. The tops were wonderful and full. Well at harvest time there was a 10 foot section of the bed that was devoid of tubes. Thinking this strange until I got up to a nice sized lunker. Maybe what was a 3 to 4 pound tuber until I got to the other end that was more or less buried. It reminded me of the Giant sequoia that has the tunnel to drive a car through, only pocket gofer sized. This is a problem for those crops that are not visible.

My concern with the Irish spuds is with the top die back, all of the potato nodes could be near the surface. This would limit the size of the harvest and potentially green the spuds because they are too shallow. I will need to check on these guys later. I might need to do some soil hilling around the potato tops.

I still like the fall Irish potato planting but maybe I may need to delay the planting into December. Gotta love trial and error.

It does appear that the long term weather forecast is predicted to be a slow warming trend. This would be good so that crops that have been sitting and not maturing due to the ice and snow will mature to be harvested. Just maybe there is hope for my sugar pod peas yet. They have been blooming but with the cold the blossoms have dropped off instead of making peas. I hope that everything comes together and there is not a slow down in the garden.

I have started a new chard / kale bed because with all the chill this winter I expect for the old bed to start going to seed and I am seeing flowers starting to develop on the kale. Worst thing that can happen is that there may be a short lull in the harvest. The days are getting longer , now all we need is some warmth. I needed to raise the covers over a portion of my Royal Burgundy bean bed because I am getting emergence of beans. I am amazed at how cool the conditions have been and these guys germinated.

Maybe oh just maybe spring has sprung!!