Thursday, June 23, 2011

Rescuing volunteer spuds


Strange clouds -- low, heavy-looking, yet raggedy around the edges like mares-tails, and apt to refract sunlight from odd corners -- have been scudding through for weeks. Risa doesn't know quite what to make of them. She's seen others complain online about these clouds too -- in California, Washington, and British Columbia. The stuff of conspiracy theory, apparently.


Meanwhile, it has rained little enough that she's ready to begin watering. Here's the reason for those fifty-foot beds: a fifty-foot sprinkler hose.


Beloved is transplanting today, so Risa's been assigned to remove all the volunteer potatoes from a couple of designated beds, which will specialize in runner bean, squash, and cucumbers. There are already new potatoes under such vines, so Risa got out her ho-mi and grabbled for them -- the proper word for seeking out new potatoes. This was more of a seek-and-destroy than true grabbling, but just as fun. Beloved watched the new tool at work from the corner of her eye, and later, when taking a switchel break, said:

"I, uh, I want one of those."

11 comments:

  1. I planted spuds today. I use a hori-hori knife, a Japanese tool (available from Lee Valley). I love it - if I only had two tools outside, one would be my hori-hori, the other would be my mattock. A sharp half-moon hoe is the third option (makes weeding paths and between rows nice and easy) but I can do the same thing with the sharp edge of the hori-hori.

    Discovered today that said sharp edge remains sharp a very long time - sliced my thumb on it!

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  2. No, no, that's not allowed. Thumb-sized potatoes, that's one thing, thumb quite another!

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  3. Dang, that's quite a harvest of volunteers! Very nice, even better that you get two years' worth of harvests from one year's plantings.

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  4. Complain about clouds?
    Or you could use science to learn how these clouds are formed: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2011/06/iridescent-clouds.html

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  5. By "complain" I'm saying there has been a lot of informal commentary: "did you see that weird cloud today?" They have been drifting in off the Pacific for a couple of months, off and on. I don't remember ever having seen one (No doubt, but that's my memory, such as it is) and suddenly they are a regular feature. So, of course, I wonder if something has changed a bit up there.

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  6. Yum! The garden looks beautiful, like a labor of love!

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  7. Anonymous9:19 AM

    That's a lovely pic of potatoes in the basket and greens!

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  8. @T, honored to hear that.

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  9. Beautiful basket of volunteers. I love volunteers. Always a welcome bonus.

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Stony Run Farm: Life on One Acre