Sweet Success
Last year, my mom and I didn’t grow sweet potatoes. Since we had lost our entire crop to the voles in 2010, we decided to take the year off. This spring we optimistically planted a large row in the garden hoping for the best.
It was a hot summer, just what the sweet potatoes ordered. All summer we kept wondering what we’d find when we harvested our patch.
Low and behold, it was a banner year; our sweet potatoes produced like mad. Most of them were nice sized roots, with the occasional mammoth one. We also ended up with a small bucket of the tiny ones, which will become dog food.
We won’t be eating these beauties right away, they need cured for their sweetness to come out. Sweet potatoes like to be cured in warm temperatures (around 85) for about 2 weeks. We decided to try curing the sweet potatoes in my mom’s greenhouse where it’s warm and toasty and around 85 on most sunny days. Half of them may be covered with a towel to see if this helps raise the humidity a little since they appreciate a high humidity during curing. It should be interesting to roast them for Thanksgiving next month and compare.
That’s part of growing root vegetables, you never really know what you’re going to find at harvest time. Most of the time you will find a great harvest but every now and then it’s a big disappointment. This year we’re enjoying our sweet success!
Have you ever had a disappointing root vegetable harvest?
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Back at the Old Homestead
We’re back in Ohio this week for a job we booked last year. It’s not all work, we’ve been enjoying time with family and friends. Of course we had to go back to the old Chiot’s Run to mow the lawn, harvest potatoes, and check on everything.
By the looks of all my beets, dill and other crops, the deer have been enjoying our absence and taking advantage of the all you can eat organic vegetable smorgasbord.
This sweet little cat was seen lurking around the week before we left. She seems to have adopted the gardens as her own now that our cats are gone. She’s stealthy and quiet, but did rub on my legs and stop by a few times for a pet while I was out working. I wonder if she’s using the pet door in the garage?
If you remember, late last fall I planted some Jerusalem artichokes I got at the farmer’s market. They grew well this summer, though the deer kept nibbling them off. I decided to dig them up to see what lay beneath and was pleasantly surprised with a nice crop.
I’ll be cooking a few tonight for supper so we can all try them. The rest will be divided up between my garden and my mom’s for future crops. From what I’ve read they’re more digestible if they’re fermented, I might save a few and give that a try too.
How’s your garden progressing at this late stage in the year?
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Duck, Duck, Duck….
A few weeks ago a friend posted a photo of her Muscovy duck that hatched a bunch of sweet little ducklings. I commented on her photo that I’d trade her some maple syrup for a few and she took me up on the offer. She said that she was actually going to send some from another clutch on my previous trip up to Maine but decided it might be too much.
On Sunday evening, the Chiot’s Run family grew by another 8 members. We picked up the ducklings and are keeping them in my mom’s garage (did I mention we were back in Ohio for a week for work?).
What type of ducklings did we get? Muscovies. I’ve been reading about this variety of duck for quite a while and had planned on adding a few. Getting some this early is a bonus. They’re champion pest controllers and their meat is supposed to be the best for eating as far as duck is concerned.
We’ll see how many of them end up being males and how many females. We’ll keep all the females and a male or two for breeding and most likely the other males will grace our table. It’s fun to finally be able to start realizing some of the dreams I’ve been dreaming for so long.
So, what new feathered or furred friend should we add to Chiot’s Run next?
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Cultivate Simple 3: Debt
Andrew & Crystal’s Contact Information
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Books of the Week
We forgot to mention these two documentaries on the show. Both are free for streaming for Amazon Prime members and on Netflix Streaming:
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:35:11 — 66.1MB)
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Quote of the Day: Wendell Berry
“Soil loss…is a problem that embarrasses all of our technological pretensions. If soil were all being lost int a huge slab somewhere, that would appeal to the would-be heroes of “science and technology,” who might conceivably engineer a glamorous, large, and speedy solution – however many new problems they might cause in doing so. But soil is not usually lost in slabs or heaps of magnificent tonnage. It is lost a little at a time over millions of acres by the careless acts of millions of people. It cannot be saved by heroic acts of gigantic technology, but only by millions of small acts and restraints, conditioned by small fidelities, skills, and desires. Soil loss it ultimately a cultural problem; it will be corrected only by cultural solutions.”
– Wendell Berry found in The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers–With information on building … feed, and working with poultry in the garden
I’ve always thought that gardeners grow soil not plants. Without soil, we wouldn’t have gardens. Since I inherited no soil at our previous place and spent 10 years building it up to a nice rich earth, I know what at it takes to climb back from ‘ground zero’.
It takes a lot of hard work, lots of manure, rock powders, humus and other inputs to grow mere inches of topsoil. I probably added a foot of inputs each year to gain a few inches of soil over the course of 10 years.
This is one of the reasons I’m always encouraging the use of mulches and cover crops instead of letting the soil lay bare. Also the reason I advocate for a no-till system and permaculture. Preserving our soil is one of the most important things we can do for future generations!
What soil preservation technique is your favorite: cover crops, mulch, compost, etc?
