Long ago and far away in a remote village in central France, a mere stone's throw from Chambord, we hopped into Dad's Van Ordinaire and headed to the local dump. This place wasn't shown on any tourist map but it should have been well marked... even highlighted. Aside from being the town's social gathering place on Saturday mornings, it was a literal treasure house of wonderful things, barely used, lovingly given up for adoption. First come, first served.
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| A stainless steel goldmine! |
Dad's garden was incredibly prolific, so much so that winter storage (especially for all the root vegetables) had become a problem. So many carrots, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and more. Storing them underground had proven disastrous one winter after discovering - too late - that rodents had raided his buried treasures and most of the crop was ruined. For someone who lives primarily from the garden, this was a major calamity.
But not this year! A stainless steel washing machine tub was waiting for us, perched on top of the heap, shiny, clean and eager to serve. Back home, Dad buried the tub curved side down, with a small hatch facing skyward, filled it to the brim with his veggie stash, and sealed it with a large rock on top. No rodents could get in and the carrots and potatoes were dry and cool all winter, and for every winter after that.
I'm thinking about potatoes today because I went out to plant garlic and shallots this morning. This actually makes sense if you've ever been on Facebook or Twitter. Whatever it was you were going to do on the computer is instantly forgotten as you chase those notifications and get sucked down into the FB vortex, never to remember the reason we turned on the computer.
Gardening is like that. So, armed with a box full of fresh shallot and garlic seed bulbs, as I knelt to begin my planting chore, I noticed that the red potato plants in the next bed were full of strange little berries, like tiny green cherries.
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| Spud berries - do not eat! |
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| Potato fruits |
I had never seen these before, and immediately understood why potato "volunteers" had been showing up all over the garden. Inside they look exactly like miniature green tomatoes, but are toxic, just like the rest of the plant.
Following this line of infinite distractions, I noticed that the potato plants looked a little tired and full of insect chew holes, and I decided to pull them. A grand harvest indeed! But now, where to store them? We already have a garage full of other potatoes, onions and garlics. There's just no room left... so I decided to bury them in the garden. Lacking a deluxe washing machine tub, instead I layered shade cloth and straw in a trench, a layer of potatoes, another layer of straw and shade cloth, and then covered the whole mess with a few inches of soil. I felt a bit creeped out, like I was burying a body or performing witchcraft.
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| Burying the |
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| A moment of silence before the first shovel of dirt... |
Oh yeah, the garlic and shallots! I finally remembered why I was out there in the first place, and I did manage to get that chore done ultimately. What should have taken me about 15 minutes at most ended up costing me about three hours, because I also had to pick zucchini, cucumbers, and French beans, toss some weeds to the chickens, stand and watch the honeybees pollinating my pumpkin flowers, muse about the volunteer spaghetti squash growing up through the grapevines, and come out of my trance only to realize my nose was getting sunburned again.
Did you know that grape leaves and squash leaves are indistinguishable from one another? Grape leaves are tougher, squash leaves are bristly, but otherwise exactly similar to the eye. Perhaps this explains why I didn't notice until today the squash blossoms appearing at eye level next to immature bunches of grapes.
This, from Bufflehead Pond Farm, where the chickens are happy and productive, the dogs are handsome and useless, and all the vegetables are above average.
:D
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