When we bought our little piece of Montana we knew we were going to be planting a garden. I didn’t realize what it would entail – that was the city girl in me. Now that we have been here a few years and the a garden has expanded into several gardens we are adding a new one this year; the hubby is going to try and grow potatoes ’cause he knows how much I love them. That’s the Irish in me. With all due irony we have been told that our lot used to be part of a huge potato farm for the Milwaukee Railroad. What goes around comes around I guess.
He started yesterday by breaking out the tiller. It hadn’t been used in a couple of years so he crossed his fingers and started it up. Woo-hoo, it worked! That thing is LOUD.
He then tilled the area he wanted for planting the potatoes. Back when he was ordering seeds he told me to pick two varieties to plant and I went with Yukon Gold and Fingerlings. A box arrived with the seed potatoes…
…and what do I know. They are just potatoes! They are currently sitting on my dining room table growing eyes so they can be cut into pieces to be planted. I’ve had potatoes from people’s gardens here and they have been so sweet. I can’t wait to have some from our own garden!
After he got the area tilled he then went over it with a rake to clear it of rocks and big clumps of grass. If there is one thing that grows on this little lot of ours it is rocks. (Even in the big garden which he has been using for for eight years now, he will find rocks coming to the surface.)
The last thing he will do is cover the area with rich mulch. He has two mulch piles going at a time so there is always plenty available for his needs in the gardens. Between the chickens and the goats we have a ready supply of “stuff” to break down.
It’s a nice size so I’m sure I’ll have lots of potatoes to store for winter. Although it will still have to be fenced off from the goats. We can’t just leave anything we want growing without protection. The goats are part of our weed patrol come summer so they are let loose to eat down the grasses so if we don’t want them to eat something we have to do something to keep them out.
I’ll show you the fencing and the planting when that part happens.
