Fresh produce from the garden in Jan!!

Thanks to the builders in 1959 who put a cold room - cellar - under the front steps.


Parnip, celariac, golden rooted turnips and a sweet potato (georgia jet)

All of this produce came from my garden!! It was all kept downstairs in easy and cozy reach, and it made up the bulk of our dinner.

I have good intentions on storing my vegetables in sand or leaf mold but I didn't have either two immediably handy when I harvested the crops, so I packed them in shallow containers in dirt. Yup, ordinary garden dirt. This has been successful for me so far. I try to cover the vegebales parts that would normally be underground, completely, like the roots of the celariac and carrots, leaving the tops tilted up if I can. I do this to emulate normal overwintering conditions. To maintain humidity, I occasionally sprinkle water on the dirt, but I have also put bowls of water in the room.


Gardening 201:

Remember that different vegetables like different conditions but don't get carried away. If you only have one spot to store them, then store what would like it in that spot and don't fret too much if your other vegetables aren't perfect. Eat those that won't store well first. Those that are whizened etc... will probably taste great cooked. At least, they'll probably taste heaps better than what you could buy at the supermarket!


Links:

Basement root cellar
Vegetables to store in a cellar, conditions and a discussion cellar types

Sweet, sweet potato success for northern growers!

Unlike the unicorn, the bermuda triangle or the possiblity of sasqwatch in the woods, this is one tall tale, that I can verify to be true:

You can grow sweet potatoes in the north


Variety: Jeorgia Jet supplied by Mapple Farms.

Or, at least, you can grow 'em in Ottawa. Here's is my adventure, in pictures, complete with a sweet ending:

1. I received my much awaited for package of sweet potato slips in the mail from Mapple Farms. They were limp and sad, as expected, but I planted them with great hope in my pre-warmed bed with plastic mulch.

2. The cutworms got two of my plants. Bottomless plastic cups solved the problem.



3. They grew into nice little plants.



4. And grew.



5. Until they mulched their own garden bed. Good little sweeties.



6. Frost has been threatened on and off on the longterm forcast but nothing yet. I decide to harvest on September 14th.



7. Look at these beaties!



8. I was really surprised by the size and number of them. Notice the latex dripping out of this one.



9. This one wasn't so pretty but it was huge.



10. There was some pitch fork damage so I had to cook those up for dinner tonight (or at least that's the story I'm sticking too). Yum!



Now I just have to make sure that I cure them properly. My husband thinks it's unreasonable to keep the house at 80 degree celcius for 5 days. I've taken to wrapping a tray in a winter blanket (with a air vent), in a plastic laundry bag, with a frequently heated water bottle in a warm room. Let's hope that'll be enough. I'll let you know.

Spend Sweet Potato Vine:




Hortiphilia Fact

Sweet Potato Greens

According to Ken Allan's fabulous book on growing sweet potatoes, listed below, you can eat sweet potato greens though this will cut back on tuber production.


Heck, here's another one since it's been awhile.


Hortiphilia Fact

Make Sweet Potato Cuttings

Instead of composting your old vines, like me, take healthy cuttings from the tips of the vines and root them up in water (they may already have some roots on them if they were sprawling on the ground). Pot them up and plant them next year. This is a great idea for ornamental sweet potatoes too.



Links:

Sweet Potato book for northern growers
Mapple Farm: Supplier of Georgia Jet slips, and more.

Reheading cabbage and short season sweet potato update

It's that time of year where I spend all my time gardening, and less time looking up gardening questions unless, of course, there is some problem...


So far, so good.


We have pests: cabbage moth, cucumber beetle, colarado potato beeltle (which only seems to be interested in my physalias - the primary reason I grow the invasive darlings). We have see-saw weather, but so far my veggie crises are minimal.



Re-heading cabbage



Same savoy as in the above link.


Can you see them? Darling little heads growing at the leaf axils as promised! They should make nice tender additions to a soup, a stirfry, my sandwich...

Sweet Potato Mulch

Short season sweeet potatoes starting to vine.


I keep hearing about how these things live by the same 'take-over-the-world-or-at-least-the-garden' moto as pumpkins so I am glad to see they are starting to live up to the promise.



Tender Fruit



Long, oriental type eggplant.


Thanks to clear plastic mulch, this is the first year that I have had such an impressive crop of sweet peppers and eggplants. Okay, perhaps I should be more clear. I have grown eggplants for three years in a row. The previous two years I have gotten less than 4 egg-fruits. Really, I hesitate to call them eggplant fruit at all as they were pathetic examples. I do not blaim the plants themselves but their growing conditions.



Mini-bells, italian frying and some other kind of pepper. They got knocked over as seedlings. It'll be a nearly blind taste test.

Thanks to Ken Allan's amazing book on growing short season sweet potatoes in the north called Sweet Potatoes in the Home Garden, I now have a new way to 'extend my climate zone.' Plastic mulch increases soil temperature which many plants, such as the aforementioned, appreciate.


Ken, you are one of my gardening idols.

Update on short season sweet potatoes

They arrived, I took pictures, I planted in clear plastic mulch, and collared against cutworms. I took pictures but sadly my camera died on me.


You'll have to take my word for it that they are quite impressive compared to their meagre beginnings:




Sweet Potatoes, one month in the ground. Ignore the unstaked tomatoes in the background.

Now the discussion:

"Sweet potatoes in Ottawa? That's a little optimistic isn't it?"
"These are short season sweet potatoes."
"Uh-huh."
"No really, one of the suppliers lives just south of us."
"South."
"North of Toronto."
"And are these like regular sweet potatoes."
"If by that you mean do they taste the same then yes..."
"So you can grow sweet potatoes in Ottawa?"
"Apparently, local farmers supply them in their produce baskets."
"Huh."
"Yup."
"Let me know how it goes."
"Will do. Maybe I'll give you one if I'm succesful."

The post that explains it all

Short Season Sweet Potatoes - the book

Woohoo!

Ken Allan's fantastic Sweet Potatoes for the Home Garden arrived. If you live in Canada or in most any other zone where you wouldn't traditionally think of growing sweet potatoes but have always wanted to, then I recommend this book. It is particularly good for the backyard gardener with its tips on soil types, water and fertilizer needs, propogation, and cultural techniques for improving yeilds. It is well researched, and anticipates my questions in an easy to read style.

By the way, I live in the 'medium' zone for growing sweet potatoes- yes zone 5a, Ottawa.

He says,

"Gardneners in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Souther Quebec, Southern Ontario and parts of British Columbia can depend on a good yield of sweet potatoes, in all
except the coolest of summers, providing clear plastic mulch is used. This is the climate zone in which I garden and consequently where much of the research for this book was done."

You may correctly infer that there is an easy zone in Canada too! Though reading this book won't guarentee you can grow a good crop of sweet potatoes, it certainly widens the possibilities...

Hmmm - I wonder if I could grow peanuts

You can purchase this book at:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~allan/catalogue.html

Short Season Sweet Potatoes

Optimistic Gardener Warning

I plan on growing sweet potatoes. Before you point out my truncated growing season, look what I found out:

Hortiphilia Fact:

There are short season sweet potatoes

Most popular is Georgia Jet, between 90-100 days

I became interested in these beauties because they like thin, well drained soil, are drought resistant, and store well at room temperature. They are also highly nutrious and oh so tasty. I found reference to them in an old gardening book (currently on loan so I can't remember the name) about the Ottawa Valley where she says she tries to grow them every year not always successfully but usually has immature tubers to eat which are very tasty. Hunting down the possibilities of season extension, I came across Ken Allan - northern sweet potato guru.

After a year of humming and hawing, I decided that I must try and grow these too. So I have ordered his book and several slips of Georgia Jet.

His article on clear plastic soil warming has me optimistic about melons too.

If this has peaked your interest enough to try it, or if you are succesfully growing sweets in the north, let me know.

Links:

Greg Wingate at Mapple Farm supplies short season sweet potatoes and other uncommon veggies, as well as Ken Allan's book:
http://www.cog.ca/documents/Howsweetitis.pdf

Ken Allan's page about his short season sweet potato book
http://home.cogeco.ca/~allan/sweet_potatoes_flyer.html

Ken Allan also sells sweet potato tubers:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~allan/sweet_potatoes.html