Sleet and Potatoes

Enjoying more harvest ...
 
It's cold and blustery outside today  here in N.W. Ontario; the wind is up, sleet, rain, and chilly by any standard for September 22nd.
"Yes, dear,   I am,"  I say, being fearless,   " I am going out to dig potatoes" -- choosing the worst possible weather in the process of course,  as we mutually observe.

" I know what,"  suggests the smarter half, who is coincidentally and  smartly canning tomato sauce --and even more smartly,  canning spaghetti sauce and creating other wonderful tomato products in the nice warm house instead of being outside in the sleet, --- "perhaps you could wait for a warmer, more sunny day."  An astute observation it is.
  Yes, the sky is black and ominous. Sleet.  Memories haunt the mind. 
Maybe I'm just getting edgy here, like I do every year.  Change of seasons and all that. "Lack of winter preparedness" syndrome.    Little wonder.  A few years ago we received two feet of wet snow October 1st. With  new whacko-weather smacking everyone,  why can't it snow on September 22nd too? 
Surprise. It can, and it does.  See above,-- sleet, ominous black sky and all.
I procrastinate, warily keeping one eye on the sky. The clock is ticking. 
 

She doesn't object strongly enough, so to save face  keep my promise,  I reluctantly shut down the computer and bravely get right out there wearing  a worn out hunting jacket  sophisticated high-society  potato-digging outerwear and mitts  insulated leather gloves, the heavy ones.  And a toque. The weird Canadian hat with built-in hat-head,  that's the one.   The wind is blowing.  Welcome to Canada.  I pull the collar up, pull the toque down over the ears. It is cold.  I survey the spud-patch.
 Four rows. Four long rows. 

Potato plants are funny things,  they turn partly brown when they freeze, but they don't really get serious about getting all brown or falling over until it's  wet, cold  and sleeting. Like today.  Why is that? You'll see.
It's an annual gardening conundrum, you can pull potato plants while the sun is shining and warm. Filch a few baby potatoes.  Shirt-sleeve warm. Nice potato digging weather. The plants are still strong and green, give'em a yank, and up come potatoes.
 "Look at that, is that a potato?"  *truth be known, it's...the size of a marble.  The small kind. Mini-micros.
"eh"...*sigh   How can that be??
 "They're not finished growing" would be the right answer. Not ripe.  That's why knowledgeable gardeners wait impatiently.  The juice in the leaves and the fat green parts of the plant are food energy, supposedly to be stored in the potatoes readying them to become  healthy, vigorous 'seed' for next year.   Surprise, in between times we interrupt Momma Nature's cycle. We dig'em up and bake'em, boil'em, mash'em, broil'em.... Pity the poor volunteered potato. We digress. 

No matter..we lurked  about, all summer, watching potatoes grow, ....until today.   Now it's cold and wet.  It's  late. Isn't that just the way life is?

 Now the potato plants are down and brown and soggy from the sleet and rain.

Potatoes brown and heading down in bone-dry soil

Everybody knows they break off. The ground is hard as rock, having been so dry--until last night, that is.  It rained and softened the top inch  a bit. It's not mud  yet, but soon would be if it  sleets, and rains a lot more.  The potato stems are soggy, but  topsoil is barely damp even while it's raining. Underneath it's still dry as a bone and yes, hard as a rock. Explain that one.

The Big Dig
With sleet and rain and cold inspiring the gardener, do the potatoes come out just pulling the plant?  Of course not!  The soggy stems  break off instead.  Loyal gardening readers could have won a hot baked potato or an onion betting on that one.     Now I have to dig for them.  Tool selection.   Fork? Shovel? Pick axe?   No matter which tool, some potatoes invariably get poked, stuck, chipped, bonked,  or sliced in neat pieces, almost ready for lunch.  

We have three different potatoes; Kennebec, an early white potato, Gold Rush, a white potato,   and Pimpernel, an heritage red-skinned, white-fleshed  late-season potato.

Pimpernel:  a red-skinned heritage potato

 Note the potatoes are even deformed because the ground is so dry and hard!

A sample of New Potatoes:   "Gold Rush"

Dig, dig....Is that a potato? Nope, it's a rock.  Keep at it.  Garden forks work better in hard ground, even digging for rocks.

Dig dig... Aha!....We do find a real potato. One potato.

a new  "Kennebec" potato--a BIG one.

  
I jest.  Actually I dug up a lot of potatoes.  Just like these.   Some real biggies too, I must admit...I wonder if the cookware back in the kitchen is big enough.   
The rows are still long.  I lean on the fork. Saved by Momma Nature again. The sun is starting to come out....coffee time.
 

Is that Incoming I hear?

The Last Raspberry

The Last Raspberry. The BEST One?

With the end of summer rapidly approaching it does not take much imagination to recognize that if you don't have some garden harvesting in motion and berries picked by now, it may soon be too late. Every fruit has it's season and all that....

Raspberries are a good case in point,  and although one may still find some late, tiny wild raspberries  in secluded areas  shaded from the intense summer sun in the bush,  the neat, orderly rows of raspberries in the garden are pretty much finished producing for the year, like it or not.

After harvesting 8 or 10 gallons of raspberries, maybe more,  it seems to me  the "pick " was  clearly finished. For the last couple of weeks there have been a  miscellaneous  "few here and there types " , not really  enough to bother with a container or do an official "pick", but certainly enough for the casual garden-visitor to pause happily  and  enjoy the sweet fruit---Until today, that is.  
Today there was only one raspberry in sight.  The last one.   I poked around looking under leaves, tenderly moving aside those drying, scratchy old plants that have given their all to produce that final flurry of fruit.  I gently push aside the new, green, very tall, stately plants that will produce the fruit next season, making sure they are not damaged.   Raspberries DO that.   Grow the first year and produce the second year.  AT least some types do.  The June-bearing "Red ones"  like mine do--I can explain that sometime, but I digress;  it's hard not to be distracted  in the bright August sunshine.  See how tall the new plants are?  Oh, right, let's not digress.

Much taller  new growth raspberry plants will be next year's producers

Back to business,  at Incoming Bytes  we like to ask the most difficult of questions and from time to time must necessarily wander into alternative fields of  interest like  insurrection, how to do stuff, and  timeless, strange but true  philosophical quandarys.
Such is this question:    Why does the last raspberry of the year always taste so much better than the first gazillion?  Is the last raspberry the Best one?   I vote yes.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.