What happened in May.

Well, it's June and that means another month of growth is on the books and it's time to look back and see what we have learned before heading into another month.

We are already working on next years Chard Wars for May the 4th ( be with you ). The responses we  received were great. It's nice to know that our readers like to laugh with us.

A few hard lessons came to us in May with the loss of our celery and rainbow chard. We moved on and planted a few new plants... plants much better suited for our space.

We also picked a potato ( slightly prematurely ) and cooked our one tiny red potato to eat and share a recipe with our dear readers.

Our hope is that June brings even more success here on +The Littlest Farm as we head in to BBQ season we hope to be sharing more recipes from the garden with you.

The Littlest Potato

A recipe for one.

Not long ago Meg & I looked at our Potato Cage  and we saw a little root poking out... and there it was...

The Littlest Potato

We stuck it back in its place, gave it some encouraging words and waited... staring at the dirt gets boring after a while so we went and did some other things. 

Slightly less little potato

This stubborn potato fought again toward the surface so we plucked it, cooked it and ate it. 

Here is our recipe for one potato. It probably isn't a good recipe for a dinner party. 

First be sure to clean the potato thoroughly. It worked very hard at growing and deserves a proper death. Certainly don't yell "Get in my belly !"  at it. It's very rude. 

Boil for 10 minutes ( or until done ) 

Drain and Slice your potato

Add 1/32 of a tablespoon of butter and 22% of a pinch of parsley.

6 grains of salt and a 1/4 grind of pepper. 

Enjoy!

April Update !

Has it been a month already ?!

I do love our monthly update, getting to look back at the work and the rewards is a very satisfying experience.

We picked our first crop of  radishes & made a delicious soup from them. Check our recipe for Radish Greens Soup.

Yum

Our potato system seems to be working out very nicely. In just over two weeks we are seeing marked growth improvement with our updated watering system. 

Before ( 4-12-13 )

After ( 4-29-13 )

While it is not yet quite canning time for us in California we did come across these cool 100th Anniversary Ball Jars that we can't wait to fill with jam. 

Because we have Blackberries & Strawberries coming in 

Finally, for anyone interested there will be a new Chard Wars post on Star Wars Day ( May the 4th )

Episode 1 : A Very Confusing Cast

Coming May the Fourth ( be with you )

As spring turns to summer more and more is happening on The Littlest Farm. Things to look forward to in May include our chicken coops, lots and lots of growth in the veggie garden and a detailed tour of our flower and herb garden. 

The Great Potato Nipple

Today we made some modifications to The Great Potato Experiment. It seems we missed a few small details in our slightly less than careful planning of our potato cage.

It seems obvious to us now, but we weren't getting enough water to the lower layers of taters... so after great debate and discussion we made what I am calling The Potato Nipple & for the record Meghan refuses to refer to it that way.

The problem was that the cage was 3 feet high and we needed water to make it at least 2 feet down so that it would soak the rest of the way down. 4 dollars in PVC pipe & fittings later we had it solved.
Here is how we did it.

The plants toward the top are doing much better than the one toward the bottom. So we wet the soil and hammered a 1 inch schedule 40 piece of PVC down the middle of the cage to create a cavity.

Once the wet soil had settled ( about 3 hours ) we pulled the pipe out & drilled several ( alot ! ) of 3/16 holes in the lover half of the pipe, put a cap on one end and a 1 inch couple on the other ( for stability )

We reinserted the pipe into the cavity ( holes drilled & cap on ) and put an inverted bottle on top filled with water ( not whiskey ) to create a slow drip system.

Happy Taters 

All of that being said, what we should have done is put a perforated pipe down the center of the cage when we initially planted, designated a hose ( or similar re-purposed drip system ) for watering. Either way we are still looking at a harvest of over 100 potatoes on a footprint of less than 3 feet. We got to be creative on an already creative idea and we are going to yield a lot of food.

March Update

I've decided to do a monthly update in addition to our regular posts. It's almost impossible to tell you everything that we have going on here... but I'm going to try anyway.

First, some very exciting news. Our potato experiment appears to be working !

There is also a number of sprouts coming out of the side of the cage as we hoped. It's very exciting. It took 16 days from planting our potato cuts to seeing growth breaking through to bask in the sun. We are very proud of our tiny tubers. 

Generally all around the garden we are seeing a lot of progress. Little green folks popping up all over the place. 

Look at all our little green friends !

We also picked and ate our first radish. 

The peas are starting to grab their trellis. 

Strawberries are doing great in their gutter.

This poppy should be in full bloom any minute now. 

And just for fun here is a list of everything we are growing.

1. Radish
2. Red Stalked Celery
3. Purple Broccoli
4. Carrot
5. Parsnip
6. Rainbow Chard
7. Chioggia Beets
8. Golden Beets
9. Sugar Snaps
10. Shell Peas
11. Basil
12. Chive
13. Tulsy Basil
14. Chamomile
15. Oregano
16. Cat Nip
17. Mint
18. Butter Lettuce
19. Spinach
20. Oak Heart Lettuce
21. Arugula
22. Bok Choy
23. Daikon
24. Russet Potato
25. Butter Potato
26. Red Potato
27. Red Cabbage

It's been a fun,exciting and challenging month at The Littlest Farm with so much more to come in April.