Wild Rabbits, Righteous Women, and Potatoes

                Women (i.e. wives, and I don’t want to mention any specific name but her initials are M.I.N.E.) have this really irritating habit of being habitually right, even though we men/husbands have logic and mathematical precision on our side. My wife was going into town to shop so I asked her to stop by the local nursery and pick me up FIFTY Beauregard sweet potato sprouts. Logically speaking, fifty is the number that I planted last year and the year before, and that number had perfectly served our own needs through the previous two winters and still allowed us to give a few away to the kids. Mathematically speaking, in March I had gone out and dug under rye grass cover crop and made a total of fifty feet of sweet potato ridges in three separate rows; I planned to plant slips one foot apart. 50X1=50. When my wife came home with 75 slips, rather than create a major row over a minor issue (i.e. choose your battles wisely), I just muttered under my breath about it “being a waste of money” and now I was going to have to “find a place to fit them” into my already preplanned garden space. I felt justified in my grumbling because logic and mathematical precision were afterall on my side. I was a little peeved and she returned the favor due to my ingratitude for her having shopped for me.

                Enter the plague of wild rabbits into the picture and my garden. I had bought some short fencing from one of the major box stores thinking it was designed specifically to keep critters out of vegetable gardens. I thought 2’x4’ weave would stop the rabbits, but they can run right through it without even changing pace. My garden became a rabbit sanctuary. And the one plant they loved above any other was sweet potato leaves. By the time I got some semblance of control with spraying soapy water on the sweet potato vines to change their flavor for the bunny palate, a third of the plants were eaten. Her 75 slips ended up being my 50; She was right on despite my logic and mathematical precision. And, yes…it is really irritating!

                While we are on the subject of “potatoes”, they (both white and sweet) form the backbone of my “Plan B” garden. Plan A is just using your income from job or retirement nest egg to go purchase groceries from the grocery store, i.e. living the American dream. Plan B assumes that hard times come a knockin’ and we like much of the rest of the planet are forced to live a more vegetarian existence relying on our small garden produce. Plan B assumes that western drought causes irrigation reservoirs in central California and Texas graze lands to dry up, skyrocketing the price of produce and beef. (Like that could ever really happen!) To the western drought and wild fires throw in several major hurricanes on the Florida peninsula and gulf coast. Plan B assumes that there might be a major financial crisis, another Great Depression, with banks failing, large corporations going bankrupt and many workers unemployed. (Like that could ever happen in America!) Plan B assumes that in order to stop bleeding red ink, the Federal Government reduces Social Security, Medicare, Welfare and Food Stamps. (Like aren’t we entitled to our entitlements whether the government has money to pay for them or not!) So despite the probability that a need for a plan B garden will never occur and Plan A will continue to function just fine, I went ahead and expanded my vegetable garden to include a Plan B section about 25’x50’. Even if there is no catastrophe, it is still a good skill to learn and should reduce our grocery bill.

                As I said, potatoes are the backbone of the Plan B garden. I planted two twenty foot rows Yukon Gold in mid-March as my early potato and harvested them in late June to make room for a second crop in their area, probably fall carrots and keeper beets. Yukon Golds are delicious to the point that my wife will not let me not plant them. These harvested Yukon Gold potatoes should get us through a good part of the summer. In mid-March I also planted two twenty-foot rows of Red La Soda potatoes which are much more prolific and suited to hot summers and sandy soil. These main crop potatoes will be harvested in late August and their area replanted to turnips for a fall crop. I will also plant some over- wintering spinach to harvest next spring. The Red La Soda should provide us with a healthy carbohydrate through the fall and early winter. The sweet potatoes on the opposite end of the garden will be dug in early October and will be our main carbohydrate in late winter through till next June when the Yukon Golds again come in. So the two white potatoes are on one end of the garden and sweet potatoes on the opposite end. Since whites and sweets are from two totally different botanical families, I think I can get away with rotating them end for end.

                In the ten-foot center of the garden between the sweets and whites on either end, are 12 “holes” that I have dug out to over a foot deep and filled  half-full with inverted rye grass sod and then added several inches of compost and soil mixed with bone meal for phosphorus. After being thus filled each “hole” still has a large basin/depression to hold water.  Eight of these holes have wire cages over them. Six of the caged holes are planted to varieties of tomatoes and two to cucumbers; a couple uncaged holes are planted to bell peppers (3 or 4 to the hole), two more are planted to zucchini. As an experiment, I’ve planted spring cabbages around the base of the tomatoes. The tomatoes give some shade to the cabbages and (I hope) deter the white cabbage butterfly.  The cabbages shade out the grass at the base of the tomatoes.

                Along the back of the garden is a 3-foot wide, 50-foot long bed of onions which I harvest as needed during the summer and then dry and store for winter. I plant 20-foot double rows of bush green beans at about three-week intervals through the summer, so I am always harvesting snap beans but never too many. Snap beans, sliced bell peppers and shredded zucchini are three items which we freeze for winter use. Since the sweet potatoes are planted in mid-May and then sit around for another month before they begin to spread, there is both time and space between some of the ridges for a springtime salad garden of over-wintered spinach, radishes, and scallion onions planted from sets.

                So there you have the Plan B garden; Soups from root crops in winter, salads and cooked greens with stored yams in spring, summer and fall bounty until frost. Horticulture is the poor man’s agriculture. I hope my wife doesn’t disagree with anything I’ve written because I definitely have logic and mathematical precision on my side.