New question...
If I order in seed potatoes, how long will they last before planting?

I have potatoes from last Oct that I will be using as seed potatoes this year. In fact I will be starting them indoors Monday. Potatoes are my favorite food . I once went into a restaraunt and ordered Fries, mashed potatoes, and baked ones. Nothing else, true story. I was so disappointed with C5, I think it was one of his first posts where he was in Peru of all places, the very home of the potato and he didn't say a god damn thing about them. I just shake my head....

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200302-the-true-origins-of-the-humble-potato

I consider the potato one of the most important crops that can be grown...Even if its your first time growing anything, you cant puck up growing potatoes. You just cant go wrong....and they store so well...Read that article I posted.....I cant even imagine how primitive the European diet was before the potato was introduced.

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/126/2/593/1868756

First batch of seedlings sitting under light! Still in the house though. Greenhouse all cleaned up and ready to be used!
We may try (with extra potatoes) a few long rows on crown land behind our place to test if the potatoes will thrive as well as in our boxes. Grow more potatoes and free up boxes for squash and such in a crisis situation.

Congrats on your greenhouse Dakota. That is one clean looking room. Out of fear for one I may wish to do one day, I will never show to my wife though

First batch of seedlings sitting under light! Still in the house though. Greenhouse all cleaned up and ready to be used!
We may try (with extra potatoes) a few long rows on crown land behind our place to test if the potatoes will thrive as well as in our boxes. Grow more potatoes and free up boxes for squash and such in a crisis situation.

Dakota, there is something interesting going on with your roof design. How about a picture of how that works for ventilation, when you get a chance.

Nice greenhouse Dakota.

Tomatoes and peppers are growing nicely, and have been transplanting them into bigger containers. Started some herbs and they are now starting to grow. Can only hope that the snow will soon start melting and stop falling so that we can get outside into the yard. Kind of a pain when we just got another 8-10 inches in the last two days. It is very wet snow though, so loads of moisture, but am sure ready for winter to be over.

Peppercorn and Clarence
To be clear that greenhouse was a S#%*t pit prior to its clean up so -I don't really deserve an atta girl!!
I definetly will do an outside pic in the next week or so. Snowing here right now!
Soooo agree with learner... I'm wintered out!!!
My green house has those pieces of wood to open and close my window/vents at the top manually but last year I bought 3 arms that when cold contract the arm closed/when hot extend the arms to open those windows fully.
Wonderful invention and simple-requires no power whatsoever.
Another thing I wanted to add...about the greenhouse.
We were devastated by hail on every other roof but the greenhouse.
Luck, angle of the roof, placement on the land???...no idea, but it was saved!

Well, the weather this week has been holding us back in a big way, things are still so cold, and or cold and wet.. rain, snow, sleet.. hello spring!

But today bundled into layers we at least started..

So we edged out, turned in compost and double dug out big beds for coming root veggie plantings.

We got
2 20 foot by 3 foot beds done
2 22 foot by 3 foot beds done
4 by 14 foot beds done.

We got one 20 foot narrow bed (its only 10 inches wide) on the pea or bean row planted, planted into the early pea's and another second 14 foot into different pea's and we have pea's up on the bed we planted 10 days ago for another 14 feet.. Still will get another 2 16 feet pea beds planted in the gate garden in two weeks.

That's it for the outside at the moment.. and I had greatly hoped we would be working on the curve garden, and the New Wedge Garden.. but now they say, rains, snow and high winds.. so we will see..

Outdoor harvest's per the last week.. green onions (walking onions), chives and garlic chives, Nettles, and Sunchokes and wild pansy's and Daylily shoots..

Still very slim picking's out there!

That is friggin awesome Farmgal!
I can still only dream of veggies for outdoors.
But I watch my seedlings under lights in the living room like I do day old chicks.... Aaaawwwww!!!!!!
One thing that's great and different for this year is...I talked the community into banded together to till and potatoe seed various areas of everyone's little farms here that weren't being used prior-to plant extra potatoes for the whole community!!
That way our own boxes can be used for squash and other veggies. Then we will be showing all how to put them away/harvest away to last all winter

That's great Dakota,

I have been asked to put a extra quarter acre into food production for a combo of food production for the local food shed mostly going to the city and also for seed saving for another seed company, the seed company I have been growing for has asked me if I can grow more this year.. so I will be doing larger seed growing in that regards.

Today, we worked on a new fruit tree guild in the rebuild.. so much work to redo so much of yard after the storm damage and the big and med and a good hundred smaller tree's had to come down.. so today we did load after load of subsoil off the "hill" that we are slowing slogging our way though and we leveled the ground, backfilled it, then mixed the top part with a mix of black soil and compost and then we trimmed down and dug out a 4 year old plum "baby" that my plums line had grown and moved it as the center of the new Guild.. It will be the back bone/center piece of it , it is staked for the year and then we moved 5 types of herbs or medical or tea plants into the outer ring, they will spread and in fill but I will be able to plant lots of annuals in there this year and

next, we got the infill down on the Quarter Moon ark garden.. we are stopped for the day but we have 5 blueberry bushes to go into it as the "backbone" of the bed. Still need to haul in the compost/soil and two buckets of forest nettle soil to mix into the holes and around each blueberry plant..

We had to pull lots of little baby tree seedlings, they were easy but we also have to dig out a couple good sized roots, the tree's had been cut two years ago but had some shoot regrowth.. digging out stumps.. thankfully we did that first while nice and fresh.. the fitbit says that was around 13,500 steps, 2400 calories and or 6.4 miles..

That is why I shake my head a little when folks say, they plan a 1200 or 1500 calories diet.. I mean goodness knows I have lots of extra to lose before it would to much a issue but my hubby does not.. I plan for a 3,000 to 3,500 calorie day for him in full work mode..

The snow is finally melting and will hopefully be all gone with the warm temps expected this week. Will be nice to finally be able to get outside to do some work.

Only doing a few things this year and only in the raised beds.

Looks great peppercorn.

The new boxes were built at the beginning of the month and were planted right away. Carrots, peas and potatoes are all coming up nicely. The other areas of the gardens are coming along and will be planting out the tomatoes and peppers this coming week.

We have decided to change out a bed that is next to the house from overgrown junipers to fruit bushes. That has now been added to the chore list.

Planting asparagus and onions for next year and years to come. Lots of 28 year plus chemical free soil to grow in so why the heck not. Going to take some of the round bails of hay that my neighbor takes off my land for free and mix into my existing/ new garden this fall and ramp things up big time for next spring.

God willing and an ice storm, bad health or the snowflakes ( peoplekind 🙄 😆 ) don’t get in the way, we will be a lot better prepared for next springs planting.

All my garden is in, including a second garden.

We inherited an already large garden, fenced in, from the previous owners; I’ve posted pictures before.

Last year, I’ve started a second “food forest” at the other end of the property. The reason being that I ran out of room in the main garden and I wanted some separation in case of bugs or diseases.

I started with a few honey berry plants I found on sale, then some currants and apricot trees found discounted. Added some of of my strawberry runners and a few yearling raspberry plants. It actually looked pretty good by the time fall rolled out. I’ve expended that second garden this spring and built a raised container bed for asparagus. I’ve added another 10 raspberry plants, potatoes, squashes and made a row for my left over tomato and pepper seedlings.

Bulk of the crop is old fashion, easy to grow beets, carrots and potatoes. Beans, peas and tomatoes and peppers. Nothing fancy, but should be able to process tons of food this fall for next winter.

Fruit trees have taken a beating from back to back test years. One of my pear tree died entirely and can’t even be used for grafts. Two of my cherry trees appear to be dead as well (one appeared quite old while the other was a year-end discount last fall). Berry bushes look good so we should get something there. Apple trees probably only blossomed at 50% so I don’t anticipate a marvellous Apple crop.

Well, I guess I should give a garden update..

So most of the main garden is still out of the picture, however it still have the processing red current rows, the rhubarbs, horseradish and more that going strong and will keep on producing like always.. the big bulk part however is out until the rest of the work is done and the soil will need to be tested before I will even find out if its safe to use or not.

However the gate garden, the hugelbed is doing well.. as are the soft fruits and so forth

All the gardens in front yard rebuild are doing well, all planted out and growing food.. the herb beds have been getting light harvestings for the past month.. the strawberry beds are both flowering and producing berries, the honeyberrys have a good crop on them as well.

Against the odds due to the cold temps at night(despite the sudden mid aug weather as well, which was brutal on the garden veggies) it held off the flowering of the fruit trees that it looks like we will be getting a good crop on pretty much everything... tons of plums, one of my best looking cherry crops ever, the apples look great and so forth.. on the fruit end, we lost one Quice bush but otherwise, all the fruit trees and bushes we planted last year as infill have made it and are growing.. so that is awesome

Looks to the point that we will lose 3 of the 82 fruiting/flowering or tea bushes we transplanted on the new year two food hedgerows.. so we will pull them out and replant them sooner then later.

The new haskup rows are in and doing well, only a little bit of die back on one bush, the rest are happy.. got another row planted out in the hill garden, the back row got.. two U of Sask Cherry Bushes (one sweet enough for fresh eating and the other canning but said to be outstanding for wine!), a Chinese zone 3 peach tree, four pink blueberries bushes, 2 German Wine Rhubarb plants, they say they are the sweetest rhubarb plants that there are.. ( I ordered in 10 roots)

We got the bean teepee planted out but also expanding it on the sides.. got the food forest row annuals planted in.. in the pasture garden, we got 80 potato plants in.. 16 prestarted hills of a mix of watermelon and honeydew melon... Got the new cucumber garden prestarts all planted out in the hill garden.. (which is being cleared and prepped per section.

First weeding of the new asparagus garden (135 2 year old crowns in there) and the blue moon garden is doing well enough.. the blueberry bushes are happy but lost 40ish of the 100 strawberry plants that I put in there.. I will back fill plant it.. but given I added in 300 strawberry plants this year, I will have lots of babies next year to take and replant it out.. the new plum garden is doing good, the plum is doing fine, and strangely enough I did not lose any of the 60 strawberry plants in there.. I think it might be the manure difference.. that one got rabbit, and the other one got goat.. I will give the bigger one a good feed of comfrey tea and see if I can pick it up some.

I am still working on the squash and pumpkin pasture plantings and I have been slowly emptying the greenhouse but I am also filling it back up.. one of my projects today is to start more trays of things for mid summer replacement plantings. Normally we can direct seed most things but that has not worked well in the past two summers as the end of july has been our hardest hit dry and heat.. so I am going to hedge my bets this year and see if I can start a lot of my fall crops ahead and transplant them out.. we will see if it works or not.

Otherwise, I need to build the boysenberry growing area.. more fence posts to dig in and wire to put up.. basicly a grape vine set up for them.. I am very interested to see what they can do.. anyone grown them?