Hellooooo again - checking in

Summer's been kickin', the garden's been growing and we've been busy as bees. That's part of the reason you haven't heard a lot from me this Summer. I'm glad to see there's still been a few of you stopping by though, sorry to disappoint! The main reason that I've been so absent the last few months is because I can hardly get on the computer. We've had a problem with our power supply to out laptop and I can hardly use it without it randomly shutting off! I hope we'll be able to get this worked out and repaired soon, but for now I'll still be intermittent at best.

Let me tell you it sucks too, We've gone camping in the High Uintas and had dinner at around 10,000 feet overlooking a beautiful vista and an alpine lake, we've finished off the final couple of areas in the back yard farm/garden and it looks great! The garden is doing well, and we've already passed 200 lbs for the year, plus there's also been some great developments in the greenhouse front, but alas I'm waiting for the 'puter to crash on me again and don't want to get too into it until I have the time to do it right!

I hope you're all doing well and look forward to getting back in touch with you all soon!
Grow on~
P~

June 21st - 30th (Update III)

While I was pulling taters tonight I thought it would be fun to show a couple of the fun parts of potatoes that a lot of folks don't know about.

If you've grown potatoes, or even looked into it, you've probably heard of "seed potatoes". These tomato looking things are actually "potato seeds". You can see how being a part of the nightshade family like tomatoes are, that they are related very closely. From everything I've read, growing potatoes from seed is not very easy, not does it produce true to type potatoes. Stick to reliable seed potatoes!
Here's a really good picture of the structure of how potatoes grow. Notice the seed potato in the middle, the plant on top, roots going down and the tubers growing from the stalk.
Here's a closer one. This really makes the way potatoes grow very easy to see. It is generally assumed that they grow off the roots. Not true. You can see here, that the roots grow down into the soil, but the tubers grow off the stem. They will actually throw root like stems off into the soil too and grow new potatoes from those, but they still come from the stem above the seed potato.
That's the reason for the consistent suggestion to mound up dirt or mulch around the plants, because that's where the potatoes grow.

Maybe you already knew this, maybe you didn't. I hope it's crystal clear for you now though!!

All the best to you all till next time I can catch up. Hope Summer finds you well
P~

June 21st - 30th (Update II)

The flowers are doing great this year as well. I snapped a couple this week and thought I'd share.These are daisies that we were given by a neighbor. They are VERY prolific!
Honey suckle is going crazy both in the front yard and the back too. I've spotted tons of bees, dragon flies and even a couple of humming birds on this stuff so far.

This is a patch of self sown Sunflowers that we've let have their way, too a point, in this part of the yard. I have tomatoes vining their way around between them as well. It's an experiment in permaculture and poly culture gardening.

We let a bunch of other hybrid sunflower varieties go to seed last year too and this year have an interesting mix of what they decided to come up as this year. They are not type true from last year, but are very fun to watch develop.
This one (above) is already nearly 7 feet tall. The fence that you can barely see stretching off at the bottom of the picture is a 6 foot one! This was from seed that I shook off the heads of our sunflowers from last year.

The picture above and the next two as well show the different phases of what were called "teddy bear" sunflowers last year. They're supposed to be short. 30ish inches. These are 5-6 foot!





And this funky little guy came from the same seed, but is totally different. Short and with a different flower type. Must be the other half of the equation??!

Hope you like. Remember, nature is the best gardener of all. Sometimes we have to step aside just a little and see what she's got in store for us.

All the best.
P~