Okay, in addition to the stuff I wrote about yesterday, that being floating on a perfect September day and completing the rock wall for the strawberry beds plus the snakes caught in flagrante in the workshop, I also harvested the sweet potatoes from the first vegetable garden bed, plus enough potatoes to make room for the planting destined to live under the cold frame this winter. Observe:
That’s a right nice pile of potatoes in front, but do you see the “fan” of sweet potatoes in the background? All that greenery across the top of the picture is sweet potato vine. Let’s have a close-up of the sweet potatoes that came out of the first hill. (There were three hills of sweet potatoes total.)
I was pretty impressed by that pile of sweet potatoes, all coming from one plant, until I started digging up the second hill. That one really took the cake. There was a sweet potato in the second hill that weighed 7 pounds. That’s 3.1 kilos.
This is the basket with all the sweet potatoes in and around it. The little white potatoes are in the bottom of the basket. The seven pounder is right in the center.
This is how the bed looked after I got all the potatoes pretty well cleaned up. I loosened up the soil with my broad fork and then used the cultivating fork to break up the bigger clods of dirt. After that I made furrows using my small pointed hoe, and then I planted lettuces, mesclun mix, and spinach. It has been watered in. In the background you can see the big wad of sweet potato vines waiting to be carted off to the composting area.
Okay, so that was yesterday, pretty much, in a nutshell. Today we are getting a new chest deep freeze. In fact, it is here. We decided we needed more freezer space, so we determined that we have enough space on the wall of the carport to upsize to a 19 cf from the 16 cf. The old freezer was my anniversary present for our fourth anniversary which occurred while we lived in Bremerton WA. Before I started the blog this morning, I cleaned out the big deep freeze so we can move it over and also so we can determine whether we have enough room for a small beef in February. It would be nice if there was also enough room for a pig as well.
Right now I am waiting for the deep freeze to defrost. I am willing to wait a fairly long time because it appears that frost has built up in the lid and really needs time to thaw and drain. So I am going to put on my work shoes and go out and continue heeling in the pots of Norton (Cynthiana) wine grapes that we have been so carefully nurturing out int he vegetable garden all summer in order to have a fifth row of grapes in the vineyard.
I fully intend to spend some time after that sitting in my garden chair. I truly have been finding time to enjoy it. Night before last it was in the moonlight and for once the freeway was fairly quiet.
I will close with a couple of shots of the butterflies that have been frequenting the vegetable garden. The monarchs really like the “pet” torch tithonia I have with the tomato cages.
Don’t work too hard, now, hear?
the havens 