Nice!

Awesome. How does it all stay weed and grass free?

Turbo Cat,

Good question. The field was plowed and has been cultivated twice. We side dressed (with fertilizer) immediately before each cultivation. We performed the same routine on our pumpkins. The picture above is of our 1960s era cultivator in action. Think of it as a big hoe.

Johnny

Here is a photo of the part of the cultivator that travels just under the soil surface. Our cultivator has six sweeps mounted currently.

It's looking great, Johnny. Based on how dry the soil looks, I'm guessing you're not getting much rain right now? We had 2" only 2 weekends ago and to look at the ground now you wouldn't think we'd had any rain in the last two months.

Dawn,

We have had very little rain. However, that field, of soft soil, is underlain by a thick layer of clay. The clay holds water very well. I scratched away about three inches of dry soil before I found the moisture. Our pumpkins are in the same field and they are still very happy too. We will keep an eye on them.

I checked our PEPH peas this morning. They are in a very different kind of soil and they are struggling mightily. About 10% of them have died. Maybe we will get some rain soon. We planted PEPH peas three different times. About a third of them have already made dry peas. We will be harvesting them when it cools off.

We are trying to get some Red Pontiac potatoes to break dormancy so we can plant them the first week of August.

Johnny

I was worried about the lack of rain. At least the corn and pumpkins are in the good field with the layer of clay. I definitely see a performance difference between my front clayey garden and back sandy garden. Clay is better. (Who would have thought I'd EVER say that?) Maybe you'll get rain next week. It doesn't look good for us---when I looked at the QPF yesterday, the 7-day one had us in the 0.10-0.25" rainfall category, so I'm not feeling very hopeful.

Johnny - I also want to try planting some late season potatoes. How do you get them to break dormancy??

yolos,

Here is a link to the information we are using. http://garden.org/learn/articles/view/568/

We have about 40 pounds of Red Pontiac we want to plant. Problem is, they were harvested as new (immature) potatoes.

Fingers crossed.

Johnny

Johnny, Let me know if storing them at that temperature works for you. It will work for me eventually, but they often don't sprout until they've been at that temperature for 8-12 weeks or more, which usually pushes us past the best planting dates for fall.

What has worked for me in the years I've tried it is to put the potatoes I want for fall seed potatoes in a small dorm-sized fridge to use cool temperatures to break their dormancy. I keep them in there for around 4 weeks at a temperature as close to 50 degrees as I can keep the fridge. After I take them out, I keep them in the dark back corner of the pantry for a couple of weeks, with moist burlap over them to keep the humidity high. You want it barely moist, not wet. When you then plant them, they sprout fairly fast. I don't do this often because most years the spring planting produces enough potatoes to keep us happy for a very long time, so I use the hardware cloth-lined beds in autumn to raise other root crops like carrots, turnips, beets, etc. that need protection from the voles.

Dawn

Dawn,

I will follow up. Frankly, I have had very limited success with Fall potatoes. I wonder if the transition from cold to warm, you mentioned, tells the potatoes Winter has passed.

Johnny