Jim Inman's (jinman) Garden - 2007

[Bird]

That must have been quite a trip, Jim. We took my wife's parents from West Virginia up there when we first bought our last motorhome in October 1991. Then Margaret and I drove back up there in the car one weekend while I was working in Pennsylvania in 1993.

 

[jinman]

That must have been quite a trip, Jim. We took my wife's parents from West Virginia up there when we first bought our last motorhome in October 1991. Then Margaret and I drove back up there in the car one weekend while I was working in Pennsylvania in 1993.

It was a super trip for us, Bird. We rented a 2008 Ford Escape V6 for 10 days and drove up, taking time to visit relatives along the way. We put over 3500 miles on that rental car and it came to a total of $365. What a bargain! It was just the right size and our mileage was about 25.5 average. I'm not in the market for a car, but if I was, the Escape would be high on my list.

And now for the bad news...

Today we "harvested" sweet potatoes. I put quotes around "harvest" because we got paltry few potatoes. I don't know why, but maybe my choice of buying a couple of potatoes in the store and growing my own slips was not the best.

Anyhow, here are a few pictures to prove that not everything I plant turns out well. As my wife said, the best part of these sweet potatoes is we didn't have to dig by hand.

 

[Bird]

Glad you had a good vacation, Jim. And after the kind of garden you had this year, you were past due for something to not turn out the best. I always heard "you can't win'em all." But it obviously wasn't a complete bust.

 

[txdon]

Thanks for confirming my initial thought on the white liquid oozing out of the sweet potato, it tasted good.

Jim that sweet potato harvest looks pretty good to me! If my garden would have not been so bad this year I might have said something like - Why did you plant carrots with your sweet potatoes? Just kidding.

 

[WayneB]

And now for the bad news...

Anyhow, here are a few pictures to prove that not everything I plant turns out well. As my wife said, the best part of these sweet potatoes is we didn't have to dig by hand.

Jim, I have seen a lot of people picking potatoes and picked a few myself, but never have I seen anyone use a FEL to do it! I printed out the pictures to show my wife what I needed for my bucket so we could pick our potatoes, she didn't budge!

Oh, if you get back up to the falls area go on the Canadian side and you will find a small micro-temperature zone area where there are several vineyards famous for ice wine! They actually let the grapes freeze on the vine and then pick and process them for wine. It is extremely thick and very sweet and makes a nice after dinner drink. Fun way to spend an afternoon away from the normal visitor spots!

 

[jinman]

Jim, I have seen a lot of people picking potatoes and picked a few myself, but never have I seen anyone use a FEL to do it! I printed out the pictures to show my wife what I needed for my bucket so we could pick our potatoes, she didn't budge!

Women can be so insensitive to our needs...

The rock bucket worked great, but it would have worked even better if the soil had been looser. Even so, I could easily see just how deep to dig under the side of the bed. Then, I'd shake the bucket to spread a thin layer of dirt and potatoes on the ground so my wife could pick them up without any digging. I would have been braggin' if the potatoes had turned out bigger.

Thanks for the tip on the wine. I think my wife and I wll definitely try to make it back to the falls in years to come. This trip showed us all the "normal" things. The next time we will be looking for more of the unusual. I told her about the wine and she thought that would be a good idea. We didn't take our rental car to Canada. We could have requested permission from Budget rental, but we just walked over the Rainbow Bridge and I think we ended up seeing more because we walked. We really didn't need a car since we didn't leave the falls area.

 

[schmism]

our late greenbeans started putting out beans again......

tomato's are comming in strong.... this past weekend we made 8 pints and 2 quarts of spagetti sauce, and 6 pints of salsa from our yellow grape tomato's

so that makes 12 lbs of yellow grape tomatos (not including the ones we have given away) to make 2 batches of salsa

and 21 lbs of red tomato's for the spagetti sauce, not including the 6 quarts of whole tomato's we canned earlyer.

http://www.snjschmidt.com/pics/09-24-07/DSC03111.JPG

with whats left on the vines, and weather for the rest of the year, we are likely to come up with another 6 lbs of yellow and another 12 lbs of red.

oh and we planted some lettice again now that its cooling off. we loooked for some spinich to plant, but no one has seeds this time of year

 

[jinman]

Steve, looking at your photo made me think about what happened a few weeks ago. We have been sharing a lot of veggies with one of our neighbors who has land close by, but only comes on weekends. He stopped by one day and dropped off 6 cases of 1-pint canning jars. They had them in a garage sale, but could not sell them for $2.50 a case. We tried to pay him for them, but he would not take a cent.

I'll just bet your sauce and salsa are delicious. I think what my wife makes is the best I ever tasted.

 

[jinman]

Thanks for confirming my initial thought on the white liquid oozing out of the sweet potato, it tasted good.

Jim that sweet potato harvest looks pretty good to me! If my garden would have not been so bad this year I might have said something like - Why did you plant carrots with your sweet potatoes? Just kidding.

Don, Kathy baked a bowl full of those "carrots" for me last night and they are delicious. They seem to just explode with taste. I know they are scawny lookin', but they sure are good. She just baked them plain with butter. That's all they needed. Yum!

 

[txdon]

Baby sweet potatoes, I bet they were good!
I would dig mine up but then I would have to build more storage, so I'll just DAN it. (Dig As Needed)