So, this was a little unexpected

I thought I had one big failure in the garden this summer: potatoes. So much so, there are really no pictures. I really didn't expect this.

I tried the 'straw method' for growing them this year, which mean that I placed my seed potatoes in my prepped raised bed full of rich soil, then covered them with a few inches of straw. As the plants got bigger, I added more straw, until there was a foot to 18 inches of straw above where the taters were planted.

At first this looked great! The plants were growing like crazy, looking healthy, and I just kept piling on the straw. Then it stated raining. It never, well almost never, rains in the summer here and then we get these crazy deluges of rain. Here is a con of the straw method-it doesn't really drain water very well and makes is a fungus breading ground. My bed of potatoes became a text book example of late blight and I fought it! It wasn't severe and I kept spraying (organic) fungicides and changing the watering cycle to improve the situation. The plants started looking a little better.

I was going to take pictures of my beautiful late blight when we got back from a weekend out of town, but while we were gone we had a hard frost and it looked there was nothing in my potato bed but soaking wet straw. Great, wonderful, adding insult to injury, thanks frost!

There was a break in the rain today, so it seemed like a good time to see if there were any taters to salvage and too clean out the bed of straw. I brought out a little bucket...then had to go get another bucket.

Wow, 40 pounds of potatoes later, I'm still shocked! I pulled back the first of the straw and there were huge taters staring back at me and then more, and then more. Buy the end, I was a soaking wet, muddy mess (of course it started raining again!), but really didn't care. I just wanted to get inside to weigh my windfall of potatoes!

So in the pile of taters there are Yukon Golds and Purple Vikings (just purple on the outside, white on the inside).


I'm following the Oregon State extension office tips for storing home grown potatoes. I've washed them and now I'm letting them dry before putting them in a small room upstairs where I can control the humidity with my trusty humidifier, that I will greatly miss the next few nights.

I'm almost certain this should be enough potatoes to last us a long while! If dinner wasn't already going on the stove, I'd be making gnocchi right now! I'm not sure if I'm sold on the straw method, but I'm not sure what I'd try next year either! We'll see!

Holy Jalapenos!

While my tomatoes are taking their sweet time getting ripe, I have been inundated with an insane number of peppers. My jalapeno plants look like they're about to fall over with the weight of all their peppers. I was hoping to be making tons of salsa, but with 5 times more peppers than tomatoes, I had to figure something else out.

Then Keith has a suggestion: Pickle them!

I do not like anything pickled, not a single thing. But, sure, why not! I've never really tried to pickle anything before. So I find this recipe online for Escabeche or the pickled jalapenos you sometimes get a Mexican restaurants and got to harvesting all the ingredients.

I pulled out a bunch of fresh carrots and had some onions and garlic ready to go. I chopped all them to the tune of Bear and BJ crunching on the carrot ends.



I thought harvesting all the jalapenos for this would put a dent in the thick bush of peppers. After picking 32 of them (more than the 1 lb the recipe calls for!), I can say, nope, not even close!



I just followed the instructions. Fried up the veg, then added apple cider vinegar with all the spices. It was a pretty fast and easy canning day!





Keith better freaking love these! We've got 6 jars of this and the whole house, including me, smells spicy and vinegary!



With the number of Anchos, Anaheim's, and jalapenos I still have, I think a chile sauce like this is going to be next-but at least quadrupled!!

See what you've stared Yutoku!