Notes From Zone 4

We harvested our first potatoes today, and they are great. These are All Blue, and they are purple, my favorite color.

Overall though, our potato attempt wasn’t that successful. We had planted them in one of the newly de-brushed areas in the future veggie patch, but there was no irrigation out there and it’s been a very dry summer. We tried to remember to water, but with our travel schedule, they sometimes went a week without water.

That’s definitely shown up in the yield. We really like the way they taste and look, though, so we want to plan and execute is much better next year. They were a last minute thought this year, and now I’ve got months to think about how to do it better next year.

I spent last week in DC on business, and saw a flower that I’d never seen before during a walk through on one of the public gardens. It turns out it’s a passion fruit vine. From reading up on it, I find it hard to believe that DC is warm enough for it, but maybe they have to grow it as an annual like I will. I’ve put it on my list of seeds to buy and try.

We’ve decided that next year I’m going to just do seeds, no plugs. It worries me a bit, but deep down, Frank thinks plugs are cheating.

Me, I look at the wonderfulness of my window boxes right now, and I’m just amazed they all came from teeny tiny plugs last March. Seeds scare me. What if I can’t do it well enough to fill all these boxes to such irrational exuberance again?

The garden is basically on cruise control right now. I put in a couple of hours doing basic maintenance stuff when all I’d planned was a walk-through. But once I saw a few weeds, I just couldn’t resist. The baskets that I have spread out all over are working out perfectly. I like the color they are aging to, and I like having so many of them around to put my random weed pulling harvests into.

It’s really pretty out there right now, but I’ve got too many yellow flowers, and too little of other colors. I only think I’ve said that about a hundred times.
Oh — our burning bushes are already starting to turn. That’s not good. It must be the soil. They are a rather ugly dull reddish tint right now. I’ve amended the soil a lot, but I don’t think I gave it the right stuff. I just did compost, and I need to read up on them to see what specific thing they need.

It is definitely time for the gazebo. We are enjoying that so much this year. I have plans to sit out there a lot this weekend.