Of Potatoes and Mushrooms

Last year at this time, spring had sprung weeks ago. This year, I have still yet to hear the peepers declare their promise that spring has arrived.

Today I went to purchase a few more seed potatoes. I bought some purple potatoes at the grocery store a few months back and they are sprouting quite nicely. Today, I grabbed up about 5# each of red, white and yellow to round out our crops.

In the past I have always planted rows. This year, in an effort to thwart the chickens incessant scratchy and destruction, I'll be using old tomato cages and growing potatoes vertically. Today, I also chitted the potatoes that were too big for planting singly, a very small amount as I purposely selected small seed potatoes.

Our sweet potatoes are growing like crazy! We have 4 containers full of slips that I'll be planting into containers shortly to get a head start on their growth since I cannot put them out for another 2 months. I am truly amazed at how large they have grown.

My order of ginger and turmeric have arrived and I'll be pre-sprouting them this weekend. I'm hoping to have a crop for selling at the farmer's market this fall. And for us to have plenty for the winter. It will be interesting to see how this crop works out.

The store also had a bag of Oyster mushroom plugs for $12. I decided to try them out, as Oysters are my favorite and it was a decent price for 100 plugs. I'll be drilling logs this weekend and planting them in the orchard and woods.

In order to keep track of what should be planted when, I splurged for the Zarkin Royal calendar. I'm so glad I did, it is very helpful for keeping on track. It will be great to look back on at the end of the year.

We have also purchased 150' of chicken wire to surround some of my herb/garden beds to try to reduce the amount of damage caused by turkeys, chickens and ducks. We'll see how it works. I'll be planting lettuce first thing when the moon is new next week.

I'm ready for spring to arrive! How have you been preparing?