First Garden Post of the Year!

Last year's underneath the house seed project completely failed.  It started off really well but two things happened 1.) mice in the crawl space ate our plants and 2.) we would occasionally forget to water (out of sight, out of mind) and the plants the mice didn't eat dried out.

Though unsightly, we had everything we needed already to repeat the experiment in our sun room for no extra cost, away from the yucky country mice.  We already had the heated seed mats, lights, shelving, etc. from the previous project.  We set it up this morning.  While it's less attractive to have our seeds growing in our sun room, it will be very easy to water and we'll have the extra benefit of natural sunlight.  The kids get to watch them grow too.  The only danger now is the toddler roaming the house.  (Note the baby gate surrounding the grow zone. )

 Love these purple potatoes...  They should really be called adirondack purple, not blue!

Last year we didn't grow adirondacks because our co-op ran out of them and buying them for $15 plus shipping online was ridiculous.  They cost just $.69/lb at our co-op.  We tried growing the potatoes we could find left at the co-op in containers/bins outside of the garden to give us more space but less work.  Unfortunately, they were a flop too.  It was another out of sight, out of mind thing as we would forget to water them.

We had much better success growing them in mounds in the garden.  So this year, we'll be returning them to the garden, however, we'll be using a box tower method in lieu of just lumping dirt on top of the plants as they grow.  We grew these potatoes with great success before in the garden so we have no reason to believe they won't yield again. (Crossing fingers!)

I used to think potatoes a lesser vegetable but I know them to be much more than starch these days.  It's what you put on them (oil) that negates their health benefits.  Now I make them without oil and eat them with my own homemade bbq or chili.  They are SO delicious!   They keep my blood pressure nice and low and are incredibly filling for the calories.  Contrary to what most people believe, potatoes are very healthy for you, so don't believe the bogus hype!   Below is a video by Dr. McDougall about the awesomeness of potatoes.

Hopefully, with that in mind, we'll get a good crop of yummy purple potatoes to nourish our bodies.  Other things on the agenda this week are to plant snap peas, peas, mesclun mix and maybe a small test patch (if it isn't too late) of kale!  It probably is too late, but we'll give it a small patch and see what happens.