I’ve spent the past few days working at pulling out the summer crop and setting up my garden boxes for the winter crop – or for laying fallow for the winter. While working with these boxes, I’ve come across a few surprises.
One was a fair number of tiny garlic plants. Some were just poking their heads up through the dirt; some were still curled up underground. All had small, onion-like bulbs and a few inches of green leaf making its way sunward. I’ve tossed these into the salad making supplies in the fridge. I have a plentiful supply of garlic cloves on hand already so I feel no need to try to nurture these to maturity.
Another surprise was a fair number of small potatoes. Some were not too much of a shock: I had potatoes in those boxes earlier in the year and must have missed a few very small potatoes when I harvested the box. These had now grown to 1½-by-3-inch spuds. BONUS! A few had rotted – blech!
The shocker was when I pulled out a box of pole beans. I raked the dead leaves and vine debris off the top of the dirt for composting and as I scratched the surface of the soft soil I rolled up a couple of small spuds. These were an inch or so long and were sitting just under the surface, buried by dead leaves. I grabbed my cultivator and began carefully pulling up the rich, dark humus and turning it over.
Working carefully I discovered another dozen or so taterlets, each between ¾ inches and 1½ inches in diameter. What was amazing to me about this is that there have not been potatoes planted in this box since LAST summer!
