Tater Friends

Potatoes like it cool. It has been cool, mostly, this spring and our potatoes are just gorgeous. This scares me. What if they are beautiful up top but forming no spuds? I am a fearful woman.

Our potatoes are from three sources; four varieties. 2015 is the year of the potato experiment. First, I ordered seed potatoes from Territorial Seed Company. German butterballs and Norland Reds because they are supposed to be good keepers. (I have a problem with the keeping of potatoes.) Then I panicked and bought a $5.00 bag of Yukon Gold seed potatoes from Walmart because it was March and I still hadn't gotten my order from TSC. I also planted my own chitted seed tubers from last year. If they all make, I will be seeking tater friends. I am a hopeful.

I harvested garlic this week. It is so fragrant! Much better than the store bought stuff I'd had to fall back on for the last month. I will make more garlic salt this year so I won't have to buy next spring.

It has been warm enough this week to dry herbs in the car. Below is a picture of car cured oregano. Folks. Oregano is a weed here in southeastern NC. I need oregano friends...

Garden Theories

Yes, they go together, seasonally speaking. 

I have garden theories:
1. Weeding makes holes for water to be better absorbed.
2. It is best to mulch after a good soaking rain.
3. If there is a fire ant out there it will find me and bite me while I happily gardening. Which is why I am inside, typing, nursing my wounds.

All things are coming together in our garden. Seasons are overlapping. Here's a list, barring the zombie apocalypse, of what we have going for us. Lettuce, asparagus, carrots and pea are amazing. Garlic, onions, peas, potatoes, broccoli, turnips and cabbage are chugging right along. French beans (yellow) are about to bloom. All herbs are brilliant! Shallots, my special project this (fall, winter, spring) are lookin' good. I planted them from seed in the fall and they survived being stepped on and this cold, wet winter. Right now, they need rain.

Tomatoes. A moment of prayer for the tomatoes, please. Grown from seed, planted early, some are starting to form fruit! Varieties out and doing A, OK, are Juliet (a small Roma type), Mountain Magic, Clementine and a Patio in a pot.

Everblooming strawberries look good.

For the record, the beets look like shit. What? They do!

And can I just give James Joyce a shout out here for making run on sentences with poor punctuation acceptable

A moment of silence for Joseph Mitchell whose writer's block was epic. Joe Gould's Secret made it acceptable.

And a gold star for Harper Lee who made race a topic in Southern literature but swore To Kill A Mockingbird was a love story. Girl, don't lie.