Thank you, mulch.

We got a lot done at the garden today and our garden, I must say, is doing very well. So far, we haven't had many weeds (except in the aisles - which Adam tilled today) and we are thanking the mulch for that. Although we've only had to spot-weed, we are on the lookout for more mulch.

So, to update you on some things:

Onions



Zucchini



Lettuce


Potatoes


The cabbage, cucumber, peppers, strawberries, tomatoes and herbs are also doing great.

We did have a fatality this week - our okra.


I was shocked! Okra was the one plant we could really count on last season. Although we initially blamed deer (more on that later), Adam thinks slugs were the culprit. Ew.

Oh well, we'll try again. And this time we'll probably cover them, like we did with our lettuce on the second go-round.

While Adam tilled our rows today, I planted some mint (in a pot so that it doesn't take over)...


...and some wildflowers (these are going all along our fence).

One Tomato, Dead Tomato

Not sure what happened to this hapless tomato but it just did not make it!


Our other tomatoes look great though. You win some, you lose some.

In other news, today we planted potatoes! Yukon gold, red and sweet potatoes.


We used a similar method as we did last year:
1. Cut off portions of the potato with several "eye sprouts",
2. Plant the potato chunks with the "eye sprouts" facing up
3. Cover with dirt and mulch.

Our potatoes did well last year so I'm hoping we are just as successful this year - particularly with those sweets!

Up next:
1. More planting (flowers, herbs and beans)
2. Figure out our watering system

On the Menu: Roasted Potatoes

Okay, enough with the politics and dead dogs. It's time to get back on track. It's time for roasted potatoes!

With a steady supply of potatoes now coming in, we decided to take advantage of a momentary lack of extreme heat and roast several of them.

With the miniature fan directed at us, we chopped up the potatoes and mixed them with some olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano and thyme. (All but the olive oil, salt and pepper were harvested from our garden.)

We preheated the oven to about 425 degrees and put the potatoes in for about 25 minutes. Then we took them out of the oven, stirred them up and put them back in for about another 20-25 minutes.

Meanwhile, we took ourselves off to the relative comfort of our window-AC cooled living room and basked in the steady stream of cold air pouring over us.

When the potatoes were ready, I quickly sauteed up some spinach, bell peppers and (frozen) Lima beans for an impromptu succotash. We drizzled the potatoes with red wine vinegar and were ready to eat.

And the house smelled heavenly with the aroma of rosemary, oregano and thyme drifting around all night long.

Mission Accomplished?

You may have seen my to-do list for this weekend. And you might be wondering if we accomplished everything we set out to do.

I'm here to say we did.

Almost.

We were able to run around and collect some mulch. We got a bag of magnolia leaves from my dad (Big thank-you to the large magnolia tree in my parents' front yard.)

We also got some cardboard from the neighborhood liquor store. (And thank-you, neighbors, for the large amounts of alcohol consumed.)


I've been (not seriously) considering changing the name of this blog to The Great Mulch Experiment.

So far this season, we've used straw, magnolia leaves, oak leaves and mulched trees and other tornado debris.

It was kind of a surprise to discover the mulch that worked the best.

The magnolia leaves!

Take a look at the pictures below.

The first one is a row of okra with no mulch...


...and the second is a row of okra with magnolia leaf mulch.

There's not a weed to be found in the magnolia mulch.

Now take a look at our potato plants which were mulched with oak leaves. Do you notice some weeds poking through?


So, I'd say the breakdown of mulch (best to worst) goes something like this:

1. Magnolia leaves
2. Straw
3. Mulched trees and tornado debris
4. Oak leaves

Other than The Great Mulch Experiment, we also watered, fertilized, harvested and made pickles.

The fertilizing and pickling will have to wait for another post.

The pesto-making was the only item not crossed off our to-do list. However, my weekend is technically not over yet because I have Monday off. So...

The harvest today included:

okra
tomatoes
cucumbers
herbs
flowers
and......
POTATOES

Apparently, when the potato plant gets all wilty and dead-looking (see above) the potatoes are ready. So we pulled about 4-5 plants today and found roughly 20 Yukon Golds awaiting us.


I plan on roasting these with the herbs we harvested today: rosemary, thyme and oregano.

Yum.

If you remember, we planted several cut potatoes. This is what it looked like when we pulled the plant:


Sometimes, you can get something from nothing!

Lesson learned.

Lettuce, Herbs, Successes and Failures

Today's List:

rosemary

thyme

basil

oregano

chives

cilantro

red leaf lettuce

mint

stevia

Stevia is a natural sweetener that we plan to use this summer when we make sun tea.

All of these plants received the same treatment as the zucchini, potatoes and onions: compost/peat mixture in the soil and then a quick watering with the liquid fertilizer/water mixture.

We also planted marigolds at the ends of most of our rows because they are pretty and they serve as a natural pest deterrent.


Our garden design has a seating area in the center with two circular beds surrounding it. We planted the herbs here so that it would be nice and aromatic in the summer when we are relaxing in our chairs. Flowers will be planted later in the back portions of these beds.

We also did an inventory of our garden since Little Rock had experienced another major storm after our last planting.

Some of our zucchinis did not fare too well. Many of them were pretty beaten down after the storm, especially since they were weak to begin with. But, we re-watered them and put them in homemade plastic bottle cloches to protect them from yet another impending storm. Cross your fingers that it works!

In happier news, our onions are starting to sprout.

And our potatoes? Well...just see for yourself:

Potatoes and Onions

Potatoes

I'm not much of a potato person - except for when it's in the french fry or sweet form. However, being married to an Irishman, I guess it was inevitable that potatoes would be a part of our garden.

Turns out, planting potatoes is easy! Here's how we did it:

1. We bought some potatoes with every intention of cooking them. But we forgot about them and, when we next looked in the paper sack, we saw they had many, many eyes. So, we decided to plant them.

2. We cut up the potatoes, ensuring that each section of potato had some eyes on it.




































3. We prepared the potato beds with a compost/peat mixture and then dug holes about 4-inches deep.


4. We planted the potatoes (eyes facing up!) in the holes and covered with dirt.



5. We watered around each potato with the organic liquid fertilizer mixture. Then we mulched with leaves and watered some more!


UPDATE: Adam tells me that the potatoes did not have eyes. They had eye-buds. Eyes are normal on a potato but when those eyes start sprouting buds the time to eat the potato has passed. When the eyes start sprouting buds, it is time to plant!

Onions

If planting potatoes was easy, planting onions was practically mindless.

First we prepared the bed by raking over it to break up any clumps. Then Adam made "rows of holes" by sticking his finger into the ground. I went along behind him and dropped an onion into each hole.

We covered the holes with dirt, fertilized with the organic liquid fertilizer mixture, watered the whole bed and called it a day.