By Andrew Haupt
We harvested the corn a couple weeks ago. The yield was terrible, as birds ate about 85% of it on the stalks, but the Riverspirit Rainbow we did harvest was beautiful, a wild mix of deep burgundy and pale yellow.
I’ve also been burying potatoes in the backyard steadily. The potato yield has been mind boggling so far -- we’re up to 230 lbs so far, with two rows to go still. The big winner has been a variety called Satina, which yielded 65 lbs of huge spuds that are amazing baked.
Tomatoes are really starting to roll in, while the winter squash has yielded hardly anything, and what has grown has big chunks chomped out of them.
I’ve been adding shade cloth over a number of the beds that I’ve flipped to fall and winter crops. It’s worked pretty well to shade and keep animals out, aside from one bed that got destroyed three nights in a row. The wildlife camera showed that turkeys are flying over the garden fence and going crazy in it...
We’ve continued working hard on clearing the area near where the tiny house will go, and I’ve been steadily getting the bathroom ready for tadellakt.
I’ve found a number of interesting mushrooms in the past week as well. Not sure what’s prompting their fruiting, as it’s been extremely dry, but fascinating nonetheless.
Last, I’ve been trying to stay on top of starting new seeds for transplant, sheet mulching outside the garden, and trying to find excuses to go to Escondido to harvest prickly pears.
