This is a blog that I actually created about seven years ago, mostly because I thought it was a cool name. Sadly, most of my bitterness and acerbic wit has mellowed with age. But, no use in letting it all go to waste! Since I've been keeping you all wonderfully apprised of my digestive woes here, I thought it would be nice to round things out a bit...you know, give you something more appetizing to read? So let's start!
Have you seen this? All over Pinterest? And the rest of the web?
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| Image from here |
"Four Simple Steps to Grow a Hundred Pounds of Potatoes in a Barrel"
Yes. I'll let that sink in for a minute. A hundred pounds of potatoes. Basically you take seed potatoes, plant them in the bottom of the barrel and cover them with a few inches of dirt. As the plant grows, you keep adding more dirt until your barrel is full. The potato plant will continue to produce potatoes as you cover up the vine, resulting in a bountiful harvest. Even cooler is that you will have big giant potatoes at the bottom of the barrel, and tender baby potatoes at the top.
Of course I had to try this! Who doesn't love potatoes?
Ok, so I didn't have a barrel. But I did have some large-ish sized pots. I wasn't really aiming for a hundred pounds anyway, I don't think we'd be able to eat that many potatoes. But I thought that maybe if I could get 15-20 pounds of potatoes out of the deal we wouldn't need to buy any throughout the winter.
I bought some seed potatoes, which seemed a bit expensive to me at $8 for 5 potatoes. But for variety, I got a package of white potatoes, and a package of red potatoes. Planted them, watered them, added soil as they grew and smiled at my potato green forest!
Today I was out in the yard, harvesting. My veggies are doing really well this year, particularly the cherry tomatoes and the peppers.
I was feeling cocky. Like a master gardener.
"I should harvest the potatoes!", I thought.
You can probably guess where I'm going with this.
I shimmied the pots over to where I could dump them out. They were quite heavy (must be loaded down with all those potatoes!) and I struggled to move them but I managed. I tipped the first pot over, and as soon as I poured out the first inches of soil I came across a little potato!
I still get all giddy whenever I realize that I actually grew something edible, so I excitedly dug my way through the rest of the pot.
And then the second one. With probably a little bit less enthusiasm.
Laughing, I hauled my harvest into the kitchen, where I took these photos:
Just for fun, scroll back up to the "inspiration" photo. Are you laughing? Even just a chuckle? Because this was quite possibly the single most expensive potato harvest in this history of humankind.
Let's hope that they taste good!
