I spend a strange afternoon today. I've been in a gardening funk (that's denial speak for LAZY) and haven't done much, so we started a garden clean-up yesterday. Out went some plants that had bolted, in went fresh compost and onions. Today I attempted to continue the garden clean-up, and I found some good good stuff during my "work".
The turnip greens I had planted we just supposed to be the leafy portion. But I am so happy that they bulked up and we now have turnips. I guess neglect is OK in plants?
I pulled the sweet potato that I had decided wasn't doing much. This plant started from a sweet potato I found budding under my kitchen counter. I stuck in the ground thinking "hey, let's see what happens." It was next to the Thai basil and coriander. The coriander had self seeded, so it was very very aromatic as I dug today. I probably killed off 5 coriander plants in my attempt to find my sweet potatoes. When I had checked the progress of the sweet potato plant in August, there was 1 measly small spud. And after months of neglect I found a great surprise! I may even try to grow sweet potatoes again the right way this summer.
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| And sweet potatoes - a couple of these are even "store" sized. |
And in my "regular" harvest we had just two things:
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My two little Sugar snap peas from my 1 pea plant and some habeneros |
All in all it was a fun and interesting day out there! I can't wait for spring (proper!).
Happy Chinese New Year. I laughed when you said you were 1/2 fake Chinese. ;) I love your sweet potato experiment. Don't you just love it when the garden gives you a little surprise. Sometimes neglect is the best for plants.
ReplyDeleteDon't you just love plants that give you something for ignoring them? I wish I could grow sweet potatoes here, but we are just too cool. I might try anyway someday.
ReplyDeleteHi Nartaya, great harvest. We eat the sweet potato leaves as well - fried with chilli & garlic! Yummy!
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