Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Tomatoes

As I indicated in an earlier blog I devoted about one third of my 25’X50’ garden to a combination of corn, bush beans and cantaloupe. About another third of the garden is in potatoes, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. The white potatoes and tomatoes are of the same botanical family and the white potatoes and sweet potatoes have similar fertilization and avoidance of lime needs. Having both the potato and corn areas and the remaining third of everything else the same size makes annual crop rotation on a three year rotation basis somewhat easier. So in this “spud” third of the garden I’ve grown six short north-south rows of Lasoda potatoes, a row of bush beans, three rows of sweet potatoes, and four caged tomato plants with eight small peppers in front of the tomatoes.

The whole area appears to be one mass of greenery without visible aisles; I have an obsession with getting as much produce into as small an area as possible. Actually the harvesting aisles appear and disappear throughout the season. The outside perimeter of the garden serves as four picking aisles for produce which may need daily harvesting. The tomatoes and bell peppers are along the front side so that I can gather them as they ripen from outside the garden. Next year at the back side of the garden perimeter (on the north where they will not shade any other plants) I plan to plant pole beans on perfectly vertical, cut sapling poles and then harvest daily from outside the back of the garden. When the sweet potato slips are first planted before their vines begin to spread there are natural walking aisles between the hilled rows. When the vines begin to spread after about a month the aisles are closed into one mass of vined-bed vegetation. As the white potato vines begin to wither I harvest a north-south row of new potatoes into the east-west bush bean row in the center of the garden and then dig potatoes parallel to the bush beans. As I daily harvest new potatoes I am also opening up a picking row beside the beans. After a couple weeks of picking bush beans I can pull the plants and lay them down as a mulched central garden path for the sweet potato vines to gradually spread into. Meanwhile I will replant the dug potato aisles which I used to get into the beans to a second crop of bush beans and let that aisle close up again. If I use organic mulches of newspaper topped with leaves or straw and then have this close planting of vegetables as a canopy of living mulch to shade out any undesirables I have minimal weed problems, more retention of soil moisture, more total produce etc. So mostly my rows appear and disappear as needed.

One area where I have had a weed and grass problem is in the foot tall chicken wire perimeter fence I use to keep out rabbits. Left uncontrolled these fence row grasses and weeds would set seed which would blow into the garden. We replaced our living room carpet last year so I took the three foot wide strips of old carpet and laid them up against the fence. This killed out everything in short order and then could be dragged to another problem area. The carpet strips were too heavy to be blown away in the storms and smothered everything underneath them.

I have become somewhat disenchanted with black plastic as a mulch since it seems to require drip irrigation beneath and does not allow all the natural rain water to soak down into the plant roots. I like the natural way so this year I dug four bushel basket sized holes and filled them with the best compost and top soil I had. I bought Early Girl® variety tomatoes because I wanted to harvest at the beginning of July not wait until August. I pulled all but the top couple leaves off the plants and planted the roots and stem (which should produce roots once buried) in a shallow trench. Planting more horizontal and closer to the surface hopefully would keep the roots in the warmer topsoil and let them get an earlier start. I put down thick straw mulch from the bales that had protected my house’s north crawlspace during the winter. All the rain we have had has soaked through the straw mulch and into the compost giving me the best looking batch of caged tomatoes I’ve had in my four years of retirement. Today is July 4th and the first tomatoes are turning red. I think black plastic commercial mulch with drip irrigation is good for cantaloupes grown in full sun but I probably will not use it again for tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers or sweet potatoes.

The thing I appreciate most about this potato/tomato section of my garden is quantity. There is just a huge amount of produce beneath those potato and sweet potato vines and tomatoes are always over-producers. They also provide sequential produce; potatoes and tomatoes for the summer and fall, sweet potatoes stored for winter and spring. Both types of potatoes store well. My wife let me know I wasn’t bringing any potatoes into the house for storage until the vines were completely dried up and dead. Until that time the vine is still feeding the growing tubers and they keep just fine in the soil so I only dig them as needed every day or two. With eating from a garden there is not that much variety in produce; you are probably only eating from a dozen or so vegetables. For this reason cooking recipes and varied food preparation is essential to achieving variety. Cooking is my wife’s forte and (I like to think) her hobby. She makes a hash of fried potatoes, green beans, and chopped ham which is great topped with ketchup and served with a side of cucumber and onion slices marinated in sweet vinegar brine. She makes microwaved large new potatoes split open and filled with a mixture of cooked New Zealand spinach, cottage cheese and grated cheddar cheese. (Be sure to poke holes in a spud with a fork before you microwave it.) She makes both great German and terrific American potato salads. She makes delicious oven-baked French fries covered with chipotle seasoning and cayenne pepper. I do believe she could serve potatoes fixed differently every day of the week. In order to eat heavily from a home garden, cooking and a variety of tastes are important.

Still even a plain old meal of fried chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes with black- peppered milk gravy, sliced tomatoes, and green beans cooked with bacon is not all that hard to get down. There were some good meat sales in the stores for the Fourth of July week-end. Because we have been eating vegetables from the garden a lot we could afford to stock our freezer with inexpensive pork loin and chicken. I do love the taste of pulled pork barbecue!