Potato planting

I left a container of 9 organic potatoes I bought from the store to sprout over the last month and a half. HtGMV says to leave place your seed potatoes in a 3-inch high box and to keep them in a place at room temperature with some air flow and indirect light for a few weeks before you plant them. Here are mine today:

I read a while ago about planting potatoes in a stack of tires. I looked it up again and came across this article. The idea is to plant your potatoes in a couple of old tires filled with soil, and as soon as the potato plant grows to about a foot high, pop another tire on the stack and fill it with soil so that only 2 inches of the plant is now showing. Each time you do that, the plant will grow new tubers in the freshly added soil.

I knew I could rely on my neighbourhood railroad corridor to provide me the needed abandoned tires:

For my first mound, I stacked two tires on a section of concrete that lines my backyard gate, filled them with about a foot of soil mixed with compost, and arranged my spuds on the soil, spaced about 9 inches apart:

I filled the rest of the stack with more soil and compost. I did the same for a second stack, and voilà:

Of seeds and sprouts

I'm happy to report the birth of some cheerful companions: radishes in the double-dug bed and chard in the cold frame.

This morning I was also delivered an old, rusty wheelbarrow with a flat tire - thank you again, Freecycle! (Freecycle rules, people.) I'll be looking for a new inner tube for the tire, or better, heavy-duty patching tape for the old tube. It should be pretty handy for transporting compost and soil around when I get serious about double-digging.

My mini-greenhouse indoors is now equipped with a fan and - I caved - a lamp. We have zero windows that receive direct sunlight, and I really don't want to risk fungal buildup, so I'm going all out. I'm not really happy about it, but those seeds were expensive, and I want a garden before fall rolls around. If it doesn't work, then it'll probably be cold frame the whole way.

I sprouted lots of spearmint over the last couple weeks - probably way too much. I never thought the seeds were going to do anything, but I guess it can take a couple weeks or more for certain seeds to sprout. So I got overly eager and sowed spearmint in different ways at different times. Hopefully I'll end up with far more than I can handle.

watercolour, summer, 2000

And lo and behold, dear cousin Elizabeth has donated to the Garden project a packet of lettuce poppies from Tasha Tudor's garden in Vermont. Lettuce poppies (aka. opium poppies) are apparently the oldest poppies in cultivation. The seeds are highly appreciated, cousin!

Sprouting

A few of the seed packets I bought mentioned the seeds required light to sprout properly - specifically, the poppies, valerian, and lavender. So I scattered some of each on wet paper towels, covered them with another layer of paper towel, set them up beside the brightest window I could find in the house, and made sure the towels stayed damp to the touch. So far nothing's sprouted, but it's only been two days. I'll keep you posted of the progress!