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I know this is going to be the highlight of your weekend so I'll keep you in suspense no longer. Here's the straight skinny on our just completed potato harvest.
First off, above is a picture of the sum total of all the potatoes harvested from my experimental potato planting in a 4' x 8' raised bed, potatoes covered with mulch rather than hilled up with dirt. Success? Not so much. This clump of potatoes is all I got from what would be equal to a 28' row of potatoes. Omigosh. How pitiful. I planted 28 potato eyes in the bed, each in a little hole, covered with about 3-4" of soil, then mulched with straw when they started to grow. A couple of them came out honkin' huge although the quantity was definitely on the - yeah, I'll say it again - pitiful side. But, happy to say, we found not one single sign of wireworms in the soil in the raised bed.
Okay, adding the raised bed experimental yield and the potatoes we've stolen from the garden in the past couple of weeks to those harvested in the past two days from our main crop, the yield from the red potatoes was 93 pounds of good, solid, medium to large potatoes which should keep in storage through the winter. However, ([shudder] please pass me the smelling salts) we also harvested 42-1/2 pounds of red potatoes that have some infestation from the wireworms. That looks to me like about one-fourth of the harvest of red potatoes was attacked by the worms. Sigh.
The white potatoes yielded much smaller potatoes and only 53 pounds. But only 8 pounds of the 53 were bothered by the wireworms. For some reason the whites fared MUCH better than the reds as far as not attracting the wireworms.
That means we have a total of 138 pounds of really nice potatoes in storage which is plenty for the two of us and for sharing.
The bad news is that I have 50-1/2 pounds of potatoes with wireworm damage to process by either canning and/or freezing if I want to get any food value out of them. Our daughter says she will take some of them to make up into mashed potatoes for her freezer because that will be a real "convenience" food for her this winter. I'll do the same with some for us. (My husband, the mashed potato lover, is thrilled thinking he'll get mashed potatoes whenever he wants if we have a freezer full of them all ready to warm up.)
Bottom line, the experimental "cage" of potatoes grown under mulch in the raised bed didn't work for me this year. Would it give a better crop under different conditions in another year? Certainly might, but I don't know if I'll try it again soon.
The wireworms were a nasty little surprise but I've never had any trouble with them before. And we didn't lose our whole crop of potatoes to them either. We ended up with more potatoes than we'll need for the year so all is well.
We had a wind storm this past Wednesday which took a lot of leaves off our trees.
Nearly all the popple trees are bare and the birches are valiantly hanging on to about half of their leaves. Our front deck below this big birch has windrows of leaves on it.
Our driveway that was a riot of colors the first of this week is now looking close to November bare.
I took this picture at about 5 o'clock this afternoon with the sun quickly falling into the western horizon behind me.
After doing some serious thinking about the wireworm problem in our potatoes (I dreamed about it last night, for Pete's sake), I decided that the sooner we got the potatoes out of the ground and the unaffected ones safely stored by themselves far, far away from any hint of a wireworm, the better off our winter supply of potatoes would be.
What a job. We dug about half the potatoes today, carefully inspecting each and every one for those blasted worm holes, and sorted them into two groups. Good taters and bad taters.
I tried really, really hard to maintain my usual sunny disposition (ahem) and remain optimistic. Each time I discovered a big, beautiful potato riddled with holes and rampant with those ugly, wiggly, despicable worms (shudder), I put out a little sentiment of gratitude that not ALL the potatoes have been affected.
We could have finished the whole job today if not for a couple of other things on the schedule that needed tending to. We'll finish up tomorrow, be done with the task and then I'll start working on the "bad" taters prepping them (most likely) for the freezer.
Hubby and I both commented when we were working in the garden today that typically we're digging potatoes in damp, nasty, cold weather. So much so that we have to stop periodically to come in to the house to warm up our hands or get more clothing. Today was so unseasonably warm hubby was stripped down to his t-shirt and I had to go find a sleeveless blouse I had packed away with the summer clothes. We both actually got pretty darn sweaty working in the full sunlight.
Complaints, complaints. I promise to stop the kvetching if we get lots more of those gorgeous fall days that are perfect "sweatshirt weather." How 'bout, say, two more months of them?
I have a dilemma that I wonder if any of you can help with.
We still haven't harvested our potato crop because the weather has stayed relatively warm (no killing frost yet) and our storage area for the potatoes is also remaining warmer than we'd like to have it.
We've been "stealing" potatoes from the garden as we need them. They've been bigger than usual, heavy, solid, crisp, and very flavorful. (Hip-hip-hooray!)
The problem? About one-fourth (maybe a little less than that) of the ones we've dug so far have holes in them.
And in these holes are very small worms about 1/4" long and thin, white/beige in color and they've very obviously been happily dining on the potatoes.
When we bring in a batch of freshly dug spuds, I sort the perfect (no holes/no worms) ones from those with holes in them. The perfect ones get stored in the spare refrig and the holey ones I leave out on the counter and try to use up right away . . . after cutting out the bad spots, of course.
I've been encouraging hubby to help me dig up all the potatoes because . . . well, I just want to get all outside work done and buttoned up for the winter so I can get back to doing some QUILTING! (Yes, I am becoming increasingly cranky because I've been out of my quilt studio for so long.)
The dilly-emma: When we store the potatoes, what the heck am I gonna do with all of them that have the worms in them?
Hubby thinks that if we don't dig them right now, but rather wait until we've had a couple of frosts, the worms will be encouraged (by the cold weather) to leave the potatoes and burrow down deeper in the soil for the winter.
If that happens, I would be very happy. If it doesn't, won't the worms just keep eating the potatoes in storage and probably cause rot and other ishy things to happen to those potatoes? (I'd certainly have to store them separately from the "good" potatoes.)
I've never encountered this problem before and am wondering if any of you have or if you have any advice to offer.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Speaking of foods that taste particularly good this time of year . . . isn't this just the perfect time to get back into baking homemade bread?
I don't think I made bread even once this summer. Did I? Nope, I sure can't remember it. Fortunately, we have a lady in the area, a fantastic bread baker, who makes and sells loaves of artisan bread so we haven't been too, too deprived in the bread department these past few months.
Making my own bread is something I really enjoy so it feels good to get my hands back into the dough again.
Besides loaves of bread, I like to keep buns on hand for use with hamburgers and hot dogs.
The following recipe isn't my favorite rye bread recipe as it doesn't have a high ratio of rye flour in it. But because rye contains very little gluten (the substance that allows bread to rise) and my best rye bread is fairly heavy and dense, I like to use this recipe for buns.
Yesterday I made half the recipe into hamburger buns and half into one loaf of bread. The original recipe was for rye buns (as in dinner roll buns) but I found it makes a good loaf of bread besides making good hamburger buns.
RYE BUNS
4 to 5 cups unbleached white flour
2 cups rye flour
2 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons caraway seeds
1 teaspoon celery seeds
2 (rounded) tablespoons dry yeast
1/4 cup butter
2 cups warm (115-120 degrees) water
2 eggs, slightly beaten
In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups unbleached flour, 2 cups rye flour, sugar, salt, caraway seeds, celery seeds and dry yeast.
In a small saucepan using a thermometer, warm butter and water to 115-120 degrees. Add to flour mixture and partially mix in. Then add the eggs and continue beating until all is incorporated.
Gradually add as much unbleached flour as you need to form a stiff dough. Knead on floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.
Place in greased bowl, turning to grease top.
Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
Punch down and divide as desired. For each of my burger buns, I use approximately 3 ounces of dough.
I press the dough for the buns quite flat when putting them on the greased cookie sheet because they will rise before baking. Those two little thingies on the right end of the cookie sheet are dinner rolls I made to go with our soup and salad dinner.
The nine burger buns and two dinner rolls took about half of the dough. I made the other half into a traditional loaf of bread.
This was everything cooling after it came out of the oven.
Hubby came in the door just as I was putting the buns and loaf on the racks to cool. He'd been out at our daughter's most of the day and had worked up a bit of an appetite. We all know what fresh, homemade bread smells like. Well, I thought I was going to have to beat him off with a stick until one of the buns cooled enough so he could eat it.
Yup, sure does feel good to be baking bread again. Next summer, no matter how busy I am outside I'm going to decree every rainy day as bread making day.
Would one of you please be responsible for holding me to that??
I brought these two Red Kuri squash in last week to use as decoration. The big one weighs 6-1/2 pounds and the smaller weighs 3-1/2 pounds. Most of the squash out in the garden are close to or somewhere between these weights.
Yesterday I finally got up enough courage to bring another one in and cut it open to see if it had matured enough to be edible. I had just about convinced myself the squash weren't going to make it. But they DID, oh ye of little faith, Mama Pea!
I split it in half and . . . wow, it looked good! So I baked it to eat with our evening meal. Wow again. It was very, very good!
I am so happy that the hundred pounds of squash out there in the garden have ripened enough to be usable. (A hundred pounds?! If, on the the average, each squash weighs 5 pounds, and there are at least 25 of them . . . well, that makes a little more than 100 pounds, right?)
So what the heck am I going to DO with 100+ pounds of squash? I'm going to give away as many as I can before people start running in the opposite direction when they see me. I've been thinking I'd also like to cook and freeze some to use in recipes where I'd normally use pumpkin. But just how would the squash be as a pumpkin substitute?
I had 2 cups of cooked squash left from the one we ate yesterday. So today I made a pumpkin pie with the squash leftovers.
This is the pie ready to go into the oven. Umm, looks a little light in color, doesn't it?
Just out of the oven and looking a little darker . . . but also like it wants to essplode! What's with this?
As the pie cooled, it began to look more like a pumpkin pie.
We sampled it for dessert tonight. The texture was not quite as smooth as pumpkin (I'm not sure why) and although the flavor was a smidge different than pumpkin, it was actually very tasty and I wonder if a person would be able to detect the difference between this squash pie and one made with pumpkin.
Bottom line, I've decided I will put up a quantity of the squash to use in place of canned pumpkin this winter.
And I am so, so happy the Red Kuris will be used for food rather than as funny-shaped pumpkin decorations!
When hubby's niece and her husband were here for a visit a few weeks ago, they gave us this gorgeous mum plant.
At that time it had a gazillion tightly closed buds on it, so we couldn't tell what color the blossoms would be. Turns out it's this deep, dark red and could hardly be more beautiful.
The plant is huge measuring about three feet across the top.
I had Zoey the Wonder Dog pose by the mum to give you an idea of how big it is. She looks thrilled, doesn't she?
What a fantastically colorful time of year autumn is. I'd take it any day over muddy, damp, unpredictable spring. Yay for fall!!
First off, above is a picture of the sum total of all the potatoes harvested from my experimental potato planting in a 4' x 8' raised bed, potatoes covered with mulch rather than hilled up with dirt. Success? Not so much. This clump of potatoes is all I got from what would be equal to a 28' row of potatoes. Omigosh. How pitiful. I planted 28 potato eyes in the bed, each in a little hole, covered with about 3-4" of soil, then mulched with straw when they started to grow. A couple of them came out honkin' huge although the quantity was definitely on the - yeah, I'll say it again - pitiful side. But, happy to say, we found not one single sign of wireworms in the soil in the raised bed.
