Harvest Monday

A while back, there were some red and russet potatoes sprouting in my pantry. Usually, I throw such potatoes into my compost pile (where they grow happily in the summer). This time, I dug a pit in the back yard and planted them there. Other than earthing them up a couple times, I totally ignored them. This week, they were looking a little worse for the wear as the weather warmed up and the dogs kept barreling through them. So I checked to see if any had set tubers. Many looked like the plants below.

Perfect new potato size. The whole patch yielded 3 lbs, 4 oz of new potatoes, all washed up below. Some had such delicate skins that washing them stripped the skin right off.

I combined the potatoes with some garlic and herbs from the garden (more herbs and substantially less garlic than in this picture).

I had the roasted potatoes for dinner. Only the olive oil, salt, and pepper were produced off the property. How locavore is that?

In other news, my cayuga grape has two clusters of grapelets. None of the other vines set fruit this year.

And, although I don't have a picture of it yet, the cayuga's unkillable predecessor has actually put up leaves from its base. This was the plant I originally thought was dead, pulled up and tossed into the weeds where it languished for a couple of weeks, then realized that it might still be alive, and replanted in the backyard. It hung on there for a while, still green when I nicked the bark to check, but did not produce any leaf buds. Finally, I found the little branches were dried out and dead. Thankfully, before I could yank the poor thing out of the ground again, I noticed it was growing leaves at the very base of the trunk.

I love unkillable plants. They do well in my yard. I shall add cayuga grape to the list, which already includes Red Russian kale and potatoes.

Totals to date:

39 oz greens

60 lbs oranges (my sister's tree)

13.5 oz kumquats (my mother's tree)

13 lbs cherries (my neighbor's tree)

14.5 oz radish pods

8 oz peas (I'm sure I would have harvested more, but I started feeding the vines to my rabbits)

5.5 oz garlic
3 lbs 4 oz new potatoes

2 oz herbs

.5 oz tiny onion (its stem was broken by a wayward foot, so I went ahead and ate it)