Unintentional gardening

Hubby never lets the compost, well, compost. I think I mentioned it before. Anyway, out front where he dumped some compost, we have potatoes and tomatoes growing. It's funny how gardens you want to grow, don't; but dump some compost wherever, and plants will do what they want. One of the potato plants has been dying off, so I decided to pull it and see what was there. I got a half dozen potatoes of different sizes, and saw a lot of nice earthworms.

If you click on the picture you should be able to see the worm about the center of the picture. There were probably a dozen worms this size, and boy do they wiggle and jump!

There are a couple other potato plants out there with little pea-sized potatoes. I have read that you can rebury the plants and the potatoes should continue to grow. We shall see.
It did turn out there was a second potato plant that was dying or had died, because I found three more nice little potatoes.
All told, we ended up with nine potatoes which should make a nice breakfast tomorrow.

The reason I brought the two smaller ones in, is because they came from the plant that had died.

But best of all, no fire ants!

Be safe and God bless.

Back for a bit

Will try to catch up. Hope you are all well!
Thanks for all the comments and good wishes on my last post. They helped!
Everything was fine when we got there Friday.
Will try to post more later.

Found this when I got home. :o)

And those of you who said I had volunteer potato plants? You were right! :o)

The plants were starting to die off. Not sure if it was the heat or the fire ant nest I found in the mulch box.
Anyway, I dug around in the mulch and found these.

We will definitely plant potatoes again. To me, they are without a doubt, the easiest thing for a beginner to grow. :o)

Have a blessed week! ♥

Sometimes failure can be success

So. I am dense. In spite of all that I read, it never occurred to me that topsoil would not be good for plants.
The topsoil like you buy at the box home improvement stores.
Or Walmart.
But it's true. All topsoils are not created equal, and they are not good for a lot of plants. How did I manage to learn this?
The tomato plant that we have gets blossom end rot before the tomatoes ripen.

To give you further information, I know I mentioned the bucket gardens. Well, I've learned that while broccoli and brussels sprouts don't like heat, they don't like freezing temps either. While I managed to keep them alive, they did not do what I would have liked and had pretty much gone to seed by the time we got back from the farm in February.

So, into the composting pile they went and I bought some seed potatoes from Walmart. Because it's here where I live and not 30 miles away.
I experimented with buckets and a raised bed. Some of the seed potatoes went into buckets and some into the raised bed. They seemed to grow really well, lots of vigorous green leaves, and I thought 'cool'.
But then the leaves began spotting. A lot. And dying off.
I looked it up on the internet, and it was some sort of disease that was especially susceptible by a variety called Red Norland.
And what did Walmart sell?
Yes. Red Norland. By the time we got back from the farm in May, all 7 plants had died off completely.
You see why I say I have a black thumb?

Anyway, in an effort to save the tomato plant and get it some soil with more calcium in it, I decided to get some fruit and vegetable dirt. I dumped out the dirt from one of the buckets that the potato plants had been in and refilled it with the other dirt and moved the tomato plant. Probably not the wisest thing to do, but since I'm losing tomatoes anyway, I figure it's worth a try.

But the 'success' I spoke of? Guess what I found in the buckets.

Guess.








That's right. Potatoes. :-)

Only one was really of any size, but I don't care. Made me smile. :-)
Those of you who know about potatoes, should I have left them in the dirt longer? Would they have gotten any bigger? Or did I do right to search them all out since the plants were dead?
Just curious.

So yes, even though I thought I failed with the potatoes, I sort of succeeded.  :-)

Now to see if I can save the tomato plant....

And we went fishing this morning. Caught a half dozen nice pan fish. I'm thawing the fish we caught before we went to the farm and we'll fry them up for dinner tonight. Fish and potatoes, too. :-)

Happy Saturday, everyone!