Potatoes in the garden

This year I grew  Yukon gold and Red Pontiac potatoes. I used the raised hugalkuture bed, topsoil bags and grow bags of sorts. The Yukon gold did not do well with all the rain we had. The red did well. I learned you get larger tubers and health was good in the ground verses the bags.
But I will try some different types of bags next year.

My winter window garden

It is such a joy to have the garden come inside with you for the winter. Even if it is only a few things. It keeps spring alive year round. And takes away the winter blues.

I have shelves up to keep the cats happy. Reba likes to check on the plants every day. She some times nips on the pineapple leaf. But no harm is done. I have plans for this window. it will be made about 4 inches deeper.

This is a rose bush cutting. I have it in a cup with some weeping willow branches broke up to create a rooting hormone. It is doing well. But no sign of roots yet.

This rose cutting was in water with the one above and then placed in this cup with willow water to wet the soil. It is alive but the leaves are not so happy.

This is a cranberry bean plant. Only 4-5 weeks old. And beans are growing on it. Yea! This one is as long as my finger. Did you know beans are able to self-pollinate?

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This is a leek. i bought it at the grocery.I put it in the container with water for a week. Then added peat moss and vermiculite. Now a week later. It is starting to regrow.

I was giving up hope on this one. I planted seeds for pawpaw trees the end of July. I thought they were not going to sprout. So the sat on a shelf in the kitchen away from the window. They were covered in plastic like the photo below. I glanced at them yesterday. Surprised to find this on almost as tall as my finger. :) So today the cover comes off. And it will be re potted to a deeper container. So the tap root can get longer.  

The plant in the water to the left is an avocado pit. It has taken over  4 months for it to sprout a tap root. And 2 months more to get a stem to pop up less than 1 inch tall. I was about to give up hope on it too. But soon it will be put in a pot of soil too. So the window is happy for now.
Thanks for visiting my window garden.

Preparing garden for winter

Good day, friends!
Seems like Sumner did not show up this year.   We had so much rain for spring and early summer. Then cool to cold temps in July. Maybe a few hot days in Aug. Now it is time to prepare the beds for winter rest.

I posted this video of how I plant to both enrich the soil and feed the worms. I hope you enjoy it. I am adding kitchen scraps, old news papers. Mushroom compost, oats. And later will add layers of leaves. I placed a empty oatmeal container in the corner. To attract worms to make worm casting in it. The bottom was removed.  I hope to be able to collect castings from it, to use in other areas.
Thank for visiting and watching my videos.
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Saving tomato seed

I have been collecting seed from tomatoes given to me. And from this years tomato grown in my garden. It is best to save seed from heirloom plants. Hybrids may not produce the same fruit  that you just ate. They may revert to one of the parent plants. But if you like what is grown from that seed. You can collect and replant it for a few years. And it may stabilize into the same plant year after year then. It is possible any plant can cross pollinate with another type of tomato. This would create a new hybrid. So if you want to have only 1 type of tomato it is best to not grow a variety near each other.

I forgot to drain my tomato seed after a few days and let it dry out. I left it to ferment from Aug 7 to Aug 21. So my seeds my not be good for next year. I should have waited only 3 or 4 days. But I was surprised the seed I collected from a tomato in my garden sprouted in the cup of water.