Harvest Day

Since Dave was having trouble starting the lawn mower, he decided he should do other work in the yard. First things first-- harvest the potatoes. We had our first frost last night, so it seems like the time is right.

So he started digging. And up came the potatoes. And more potatoes. And more. And more. And more! It was awesome. In total, we got about 30 pounds of red and blue potatoes. Next year, I'd like to plant twice as many. We had so much fun harvesting them today! I can't wait for some blue mashed potatoes in the near future :)

The hill was full of potato plants. Dave got the shovel and the girls were right there to help him with the harvest.
He would dig up the plants and the girls and I would pull off any potatoes hanging from the roots.


There would always be some left laying on the ground.

We had all different sizes of potatoes. Some were huge!


Some were medium sized.


And some were wee little babies! Of course, the baby ones were Lacy's favorite.

At the end, we had a huge pile of dirt left over. No, those are not potatoes Rose is holding-- she was scooping up the dirt and throwing it! Fun times.

And the total harvest was 10 pounds of reds and 20 pounds of blues. Not too bad from a couple of overgrown potatoes and a pound of seed potatoes at the farmer's market! It probably cost me about $2 to grow all these potatoes. Yippee!

We are absolutely going to grow potatoes next year. It was fun, and we got a good result. I think I'd like to do about twice as many next year, and maybe have a couple more varieties for good measure. We did find a ton of caterpillars while we were digging, and some of our potatoes looked like they had been eaten. Dave and Lacy are now on their way to get a new spark plug for the lawn mower and to stop by the market to ask some questions about the caterpillars. They brought a sample in for the master gardeners to take a look at and assess. We love our farmer's market!

I also picked all the rest of the apples off our trees today. They are tiny, but the girls are tiny, too, so they'll be perfect for one another.

Next step: Cleaning up the back yard, mowing the lawn, finishing the harvest, till the gardens, and plant some winter crops. I'm thinking some aromatics will be all that my garden can handle. I'm not sure-- I'm very inexperienced with winter gardening.