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magical thyme

(14,881 posts)
Thu Dec 12, 2013, 09:42 PM Dec 2013

I just got my Maine Potato Lady catalog

The bad news is it doesn't include Peruvian purple wild potatoes.

The good news is when she shipped her seed, it included instructions on how to prepare potatoes for planting. So hopefully some of my Peruvian purples will make it through the winter and I'll successfully get them going in the spring. I've certainly had supermarket potatoes start throwing roots without trying in the past.

This summer I'm going to try sweet potatoes. I'm dropping the carola white potatoes -- mine didn't get that yummy, buttery smooth texture and flavor that I remembered. Instead it will be all deep purple, blue and red potatoes with high levels of antioxidants.

I got my Johnny's catalog last week. I've already picked out the beets. I ate some of my own beets last week. OMG they are delicious. I cooked and froze them...they were just *wonderful.* I only got 2 little bags of them last summer. Next summer I'm going for broke and planting a good 2 rows of them. Damn I love you beets!

I'm also going to try eggplants again. I lost mine during my hardening off -- the weather report was for cloudy with intermittent showers. Instead is was cold deluges. Then I tried buying a couple plants from the local greenhouse. The plants did ok, but never did produce a thing.

I may try to make a little portable greenhouse this spring as well. I have dozens of young sumac saplings that I think I could lash a frame out of using baling string. Then just get sheet plastic to cover it...

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I just got my Maine Potato Lady catalog (Original Post) magical thyme Dec 2013 OP
I love when the gardening catalogs start coming in the mail. femmocrat Dec 2013 #1
I don't know how to store the sweets properly either magical thyme Dec 2013 #2
Thanks for the reminder! Earth_First Dec 2013 #3

femmocrat

(28,394 posts)
1. I love when the gardening catalogs start coming in the mail.
Thu Dec 12, 2013, 11:08 PM
Dec 2013

Makes me start dreaming of spring. I haven't have a very good garden for the past couple of years though.... I have a lot of work to do!

I planted sweet potatoes twice and got quite a few potatoes. They got moldy though before I could use them up. I didn't know how to store them properly. Never tried beets.

Happy planting!

 

magical thyme

(14,881 posts)
2. I don't know how to store the sweets properly either
Fri Dec 13, 2013, 09:01 AM
Dec 2013
But the supermarket just had them on sale for half price, so I bought tons of them. I've been cooking and freezing them in meal-sized ziplock bags, like I do with the rest of my nonstorage produce. I just arranged my big freezer: I have a big bag (maybe 10 pounds?) of frozen, steamed peaches and cinnamoned apples and raspberries; a bag with 8-9 pounds of stir-fried sugar snap peas; another 5+ pounds of fried green tomatoes and a couple small baggies of tomatoes cooked down almost to past with oregano; and another 8-10 pound bag with onion/sorrel/potato and parsley potato gravy/soups that I can just add soy milk, water, maybe some other veggie and microwave to eat. And a couple little baggies of roasted squash, plus I still have some acorn squash that I haven't gotten around to cooking yet. The squash was a total freebie gift from the universe. I didn't plant any this year, but a couple seeds from the year before survived my spring preps and took root in the one spot in my garden that I hadn't planted.

My garden fell into a bad way when I was in school and then in the aftermath couple years, so was overrun with weeds and sweetgrass with a 2-3 year old root mass.. I finally had a window last spring, due to a early thaw and then a very dry April. I shoveled up and flipped everything except the perennials and bulbs that I could identify. I lost my mountain mint , but that was about all I lost.

I then repeated the shoveling this past fall, again thanks to perfect weather for it. So I'm expecting to finally have it under control again this coming spring.

I love when the catalogs come, too. I love to look at the pictures, and pick and choose and dream and plan.

Earth_First

(14,910 posts)
3. Thanks for the reminder!
Fri Dec 13, 2013, 09:05 AM
Dec 2013

I've got some things I need to tend to in the gardening department!

Love seed catalog season!

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