{"id":2617,"date":"2012-09-22T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2012-09-20T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T14:09:07","slug":"one-big-onion-and-some-small-potatoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/09\/22\/one-big-onion-and-some-small-potatoes\/","title":{"rendered":"One big onion and some small potatoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the arrival of frosty temperatures, gardens are winding down. Oh there’s a bit more to do: nurse the late crops to the end, clean beds and prep for garlic planting, store the harvest, etc. But soon it’ll all be a memory of a hot, dry season.<\/p>\n

I’ve been away on a family vacation to the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic. The hubby and I invited my mother, Martha Martin, to join us. Mom lives on Maui, surrounded by some nice beaches. So luring her on an ocean-oriented trip was a bit like that old saying about sending coals to Newcastle.<\/p>\n

But travel offers plenty of neat things to see and do, so she came. Our road trip took us to the amazing tidal action at Hopewell Rocks<\/a>, New Brunswick, followed by a relaxing week of beach walking and cycling on Prince Edward Island.<\/p>\n

Not everything in my garden back in North Gower, Ontario got picked while we were away. On returning I gazed with wonder (fright?) at what the zucchini wrought. For the umpteenth time I thought someone really needs to study it more. Harnessed as a bio-fuel, that growth monster could possibly make world energy shortages a thing of the past.<\/p>\n

Of course, if mass alone is the goal – and never mind edibility – there’s a place to celebrate that quality too. Here is a fun item from the BBC <\/a>on an English couple who broke a world record for heaviest onion: 18 pounds 1 ounce. Looking at the video, the bulb looks comedic. Like a prop for some movie about giants.<\/p>\n

Speaking of prop vegetables, here is my mom in front of something called the Canadian Potato Museum <\/a>in O’Leary, Prince Edward Island.<\/p>\n

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Plenty of poutine in this puppy!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Besides being very beautiful, PEI is sort of Canada’s Idaho, in terms of providing potatoes. (More on that here<\/a>, from the PEI Potato board.) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite its small size PEI leads all provinces in potato production<\/a> (growing about 26% of Canada’s crop) with Manitoba running second. Along with an intense summer tourism season, and fishing, potatoes are a big deal in PEI. (As anyone can see while exploring that island.)<\/p>\n

Touring the museum, I gathered from my Mom’s comments that she had never grown or harvested potatoes before. I told her she had to have that pleasure and we’d do it upon our return. Here’s Mom with two kinds of fingerlings. She was as happy as a kid on an Easter egg hunt, and that’s rather what potato harvesting can feel like: fruit of the earth, la pomme de terre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Martha Martin’s first potato harvest: fresh fingerlings for dinner!<\/p><\/div>\n

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As it happened, this spring was my first full growing season in a new yard and I’d put in several varieties of potatoes. My joints are getting creaky and I am acquainted with the word lazy. So I went looking for no-dig methods and tried wire bins and leaf mulch, as described in this blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Full disclosure, the permaculture advocate cited in the post happens to be my Aunt, Mary Zemach<\/a>, my mom’s sister. Aunt Mary is a master gardener who runs an interesting permaculture demonstration garden<\/a> at her home in Los Alamos, New Mexico.)<\/p>\n

Obviously, Aunt Mary didn’t invent growing potatoes that way. Like gardeners throughout time, she’s tinkering and tweeking along the way. Just for fun, I planted most of my seed potatoes in the no-dig hoop bins and tossed a few more on the ground beside them, and mulched those with straw.<\/p>\n

I haven’t harvested everything up yet, but the first two areas suggest that the bins were not any more productive in yield, just a simple way to maximize space with low effort. (My hoops were up against a cedar hedge, where the ground would be fairly full of hedge roots.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, the little darlings were delicious.<\/p>\n

Happy travels – and good gardening – to all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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