Today in my Indiana garden... harvesting Potatoes!

This year was my first attempt to grow potatoes! I've been so anxious to do a little digging and see if indeed I did have some potatoes growing, how they looked, and how big they were! I had read that when the plant begins to die off you can carefully dig for some potatoes. As you can see from the photo above, my plant has been dying off a bit for a couple weeks. Well, today I couldn't wait any longer and it turns out I didn't need to. The photo below shows the 7 potatoes I dug up. My girls and I were so excited. They actually look like potatoes too. :) There were a couple other tiny potatoes that I covered back up in hopes that they will continue to grow.
I will definitely be growing more potatoes next year! This was so simple. It always amazes me how God makes things grow! It's a wonder to me to plant one potato in the ground and then dig up 7 - 9 potatoes from it.



Digging up these potatoes made me also curious how my sweet potatoes were doing. I carefully dug in a small area of my sweet potato container and below you will see what I uncovered! Although this little guy obviously still had some growing to do, I am excited to see they are indeed growing and I'll give the rest of them some time. I just hope they have room to grow to a decent size in the container they are in (photo below also)!

Sweet potato Plant:


Interested in planting potatoes next year? The following video
by Patti Moreno might be helpful:

Today in my Indiana garden...

Today I picked another large bowl of greenbeans! They have done wonderfully. As far as the pole beans there really isn't much of a trick to for me. I pretty much just make a teepee, so to speak, with 5 bamboo poles (one in the middle and 4 surrounding) and garden string. I just weave and tie the string through the bamboo poles various places making sure they are all secured together. Position it deep enough in the ground to make it good and sturdy and then you're ready to plant. I plant a couple seeds around each of the outer poles. Something I have learned is that although these poles can hold 6 or more plants worth of pole beans, it really does seem to be better to stick to around 4 plants (one to each pole). The poles where I've planted more it's hard to see and pick all the greenbeans due to the crowdedness of the plants. I've also found they tend to get chewed on more by pests due to there being so many places for bugs to hide out.

Today in my Indiana garden...

Today I pulled up my remaining lettuce. Unfortunately as I mentioned in a previous post, it became bitter tasting come July. Our guinea pigs are now having a feast. :) In the space that became available I transplanted two zucchini plants. I'm not sure if they will survive this but I figured it was worth a try. They really seemed to be struggling in the container. I really hope they do as my oldest daughter loved fried zucchini last summer and I also enjoyed making zucchini bread! Today I also picked my first bowl of pole variety green beans.

Today in my Indiana garden...

Some of my French Breakfast radishes are ready for picking today! If you are an impatient gardener Radishes are a great thing. They go from seed to harvest so quickly! They are a fun little crop to grow and add great color and flavor to salads. (Plus we've discovered our guinea pigs love the greens that would otherwise be discarded!)

I was also happy to see that my potato plant has started flowering and my cantaloupe seeds have sprouted!

Today's plantings: sweet potatoes, scallions & okra

Today I planted additional sweet potato starts in 5 gallon containers. I also planted a few scallion seeds & a few clemson spineless okra seeds out in my garden. I am about to max out my little backyard garden plot! In the next week though I hope to also buy some pole variety lima bean seeds for one little corner I have left and I want to buy an additional 5 gallon pot & some zucchini seeds. Since I had such a time with squash bugs taking over my zucchini last year I am going to try growing zucchini in a container in another part of my yard and use all the tips I've got on keeping those nasty bugs away! See tips here: http://www.helpfulgardener.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8036
I was happy to see that my radishes have come up and additional green bean plants have sprouted up! We've got a lot of sunshine the last couple days and I've been watering faithfully. Things seem to be coming up well!

Mid-May - sprouting today!

Today I was happy to see that my pole beans are sprouting and my strawberry plants are beginning to form little green strawberries!

Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans ~~~~~~~~~~~Strawberry Plants ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Bloomsdale, Long Standing Spinach

Today I transplanted my Tomato Plant starts into the garden and planted Zuchinni

seeds & radish seeds. My lettuce and spinach also sprouted up well in the last week!