devil pantry

i have quite a few potatoes stored in the plant room in the basement...the steady temperature along with stable humidity and indirect lighting are all traditional; methods to keep stored potatoes from sprouting in storage...it works and we would call them "winter keeping potatoes"...

enter the pantry...which , in contrast tot eh plant room, is warm and dark...someone ( not me ) put some all blue and a couple of other varieties of spuds ( i see an elmer's blue and what look like german butterballs ) in there and when iwas rummaging through it today i found chits everywhere...

so i found space for them ( it is a very crowded plant room at the moment ) and planted them to preserve them...

the container with the shriveled spud i found on the bookshelf a few weeks ago has been back-filled to the brim and the spud is looking robust...

three days ago i found this potato which had already sprouted and leafed...

and it is happily soaking up light in the nursery...so now there are eighteen potato plants down there where i had intended for there to be none...i had wanted a more controlled season in the basement...my plans have been subverted by the nature of plant/replant perennials and the vagaries of stuff crammed in the pantry...

there are multiple teosinte ears still maturing..

the yacon...

and three of the four mashua plants ( the fourth is, i am afraid, a goner ) are doing fine...

and kind-hearted Jean's puddle wheat perseveres despite showing no signs of ears of grain...yet.

uh...spring needs to get a move on

this is a ten spud sampling of the fifty odd tuber i have chitting away down in the plant room...that there are fifty that are ready to be planted NOW when there is still snow on the ground is disturbing enough ( beyond finding room for all of them )...but i have even more that are still sitting dormant as well as plants setting tubers as i type...i have gone form scouring the interweb for sources of organic seed potatoes to having something of a local abundance in two seasons...did i neglect to mention the four new varieties the potato introduction station is sending next month? or the mashua tubers that are coming?...i see cyclical planting and harvesting in the near future...i don't see any reason to scale back the winter seed potato production though...no such thing as too many spuds.

all red

i thought i saw roots on this all red ( top photo ) yesterday when i fished it out of the bin so i had a closer look this evening when i got home form work..yep...those are roots it's putting out ( second photo ) so i put it into a reasonably large peat pot as a temporary home ( there is more set-up work to do for the basement season..so i will be tearing the bottom out of this peat pot eventually and settling the spud in a larger container )...covered it lightly ( fourth photo ) and placed it next tot he craigs snowwhite under one of the lights...hoping for a multitude of seed potatoes come spring.

this is becoming a habit

it is a transitional season but it is all coming together like a well constructed garden bed...last friday i went with ellen and rebecca to purchase lumber for the first corner bed in the garden and on my way home i was able to pick up my organic german butterball seed potatoes ( first photo and they are chitting nicely...planting will be over the coming holiday weekend i believe )..this evening we went to pick up the lumber for next saturday's construction ( and the festivities are open to the public...the community-at-large is invited [ and encouraged ] to attend ) and when i got home fedex had left my "all red" potatoes ( second photo ) from sustainable seed company on my doorstep...the third photo is a representation of their innards which we will be exploring more thoroughly when i cut and callus them soon...my new zealand white clover seeds and rhizobia innoculant both arrived this week as well so after the spuds have established themselves we will be intercropping some nitrogen fixing legumes to feed them..the clover is a perennial ( i will be sneaking them into the garden in dribs and drabs as we go ) so even when we rotate the potatoes out of the bed there will be nitrogen fixing plants in the bed to help feed whatever we plant there in the 2015 season, helping to close nutrient cycles organically and keep the beds fertile...i for one am geeked...what's it like at your house tonight?