Planting

Planting Potatoes

Yesterday Milton planted seed potatoes. 

In a raised bed that had been prepped by burning off the last years growth, and then picked over, and forked, rather than rototilled. Forked a second time in the perpendicular, and then picked over again by Milton and his Little Princess.  This particular raised bed, being the third one from the east, had a preponderance of wild carrots. Yes, those wild carrots- they look like white carrots, they smell like orange carrots, and they taste…

Well, we ain’t too sure what they exactly taste like.  But Milton found it interesting that NATURE took time to grow Queen Anne’s Lace, i.e. wild carrots, EXACTLY in the raised bed that needed its heavier clay content broken up.  You see, dear reader, the other two raised beds, the two to the east, that have peas planted in them, have a much loftier, loam soil content.  The other two raised beds to the east, had almost no wild carrots.  NATURE decided they didn’t need deep root crops.

Regardless, the third raised bed got its seed potatoes planted in it.  After the burning, and weeding, and forking this way and that, and the second weeding, and the raking to bust clods and level out the bed.   And they were loosely laid in the ground, just in time.  In the night, the rains started.  And the rains have continued.  Those neatly forked beds have settled about an inch from where they were yesterday, and the fields beyond have small lakes formed on them, where the water has puddled waiting to be drained off.  That batch of potatoes is settling in, and Milton will be watching to see them poke up out of the ground.