Garden update: Sweet potato slips get started

The past couple of weekends have been great for gardening — a little overcast with afternoon showers and a couple of Sundays that were bright and glorious.

Here is the Hudson Valley, frost is still an issue up until June 1, which is why I wait to plant my tender tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings. I don't have enough materials to cover everything with protective garden row covers, so I usually wait until the coast is clear to do the major planting.

And I'm glad I did.

Last night, temperatures flirted with frost, so I kept those seedlings tucked in under Reemay for the night. This week I will get them in, little by little. I don't mind waiting and being a bit cautious. One year, we planted all our tomatoes and peppers on Memorial Day, which had fallen late that month, and we got a frost on May 31. Needless to say, I had lost most of the seedlings that year and had to replant them. My creedo is, unless you've got coverage, wait until June 1 to start that serious planting. Maybe you won't be the first on your block to claim that ripe tomato, but you'll be glad you waited in the end.

Gardening is a humbling experience, and every season is different. There are crops that will be great one year, and not so much the following. Deer are always an issue, which is why a big fence is the first thing to put up. Outside the fence is like an open salad bar for deer, but I take my chances and often sprinkle cayenne about to give those critters a little fire on their greens. Sometimes it works, but I think there are some in the herd who fancy a spicy kick to their salads!

So with that in mind, I thought I'd share a little garden update with you. It's hard to capture the whole garden, given it's peculiar "L"-shaped nature, but here are some snippets of what's going on.


Pyrethrum is a pretty purple daisy-like flower that is said to keep pests at bay (a commercial repellent is made from this member of the chrysanthemum family). These hardy perennials brighten up the border in spring, along with the little white daisies that grow like weeds just about everywhere. A couple of allium bulbs are nestled in the middle. The deer don't seem to bother them, which is a bonus.



This is another pretty area in the back of the yard that was once a pile of rocks and poison ivy. The woodlands anemone in the foreground was just a cutting I got from my wonderful neighbors, and which has now taken over. It's even threatening the siberian irises, another cutting from our neighbors. The pink is a woodland bleeding heart. There are columbines sprinkled about and big ferns and grasses in the back. Oh, and that's also where the catnip grows abundantly, much to the delight of Giacomo and Carlos, who love to hang out back there and scratch and stretch on the locust trees.



A "huge salad" is a nightly fixture for dinner in our house. I'm now giving away heads of lettuce to co-workers and friends. The red buttercrunch from Franchi is some of the prettiest, and tastiest, lettuce I've grown. Sowing the seeds in beds last fall and covering them in winter produced an abundance of lettuce from early April on. Che bella!



Some things self-sow in the garden, and cilantro is one of them. This hardy herb grows like a weed in spring. You can see it popping up between the rows of lettuce ...



... and more lettuce. I let it get big enough and then I weed it out carefully and save those tender fresh leaves for freezing. Calendulas are coriander's buddy — the two of them grow side by side, reseeding heavily each year. I'm not complaining. Calendulas are beautiful, edible flowers that range in color from yellow to bright orange. I thin them out as well, replanting them in the outside flower beds and giving away lots of babies to fellow gardeners.



There's more coriander, in between the rows of arugula. We use it a lot in salsas and such, and it does freeze nicely. I'm always glad to have a bag of it in the dead of winter for making Mexican fare. It's also nice to get a surprise leaf of coriander mixed in with the salad greens. Companion plants do know how to snuggle up together!



The peas are flowering and getting tall. The tall ones on the back side of the fence are the purple-podded peas from Hudson Valley Seed Library. We'll see how they do and if I'm able to save seed to return next year.



This is the first year I'm trying my hand at sweet potatoes. I prepared a bed for them a while back and covered it in black plastic to heat up the soil. The whips I ordered from Johnny's arrived in the mail mid-May. They need a warm climate to grow, but the literature said they are hardy little souls that will do well in most gardens here in the Northeast. I kept them moist, wrapped in burlap in a mason jar until I was ready to plant them, which I did this weekend.



I had a feeling it would get cold at night, so I covered them with Reemay to keep them warm and feeling like they had never left Tennessee. You can see the short row in the background. I'm going to keep them under wraps for a couple weeks to see how they do.
I had some locally grown sweet potatoes last year from the farmers market that were so delicious, we couldn't get enough of them. We made a lot of roasted sweet potato "fries" on the grill. Yum!

The other potatoes are growing handsomely — up front are the blue potatoes and behind them are the french fingerlings. There are also Yukon Golds and all-reds around the corner from the sweeties. Potatoes are such fun to grow. It's like Christmas when you did them up — a present from Mother Nature. Nothing compares in taste to a freshly dug, freshly cooked potato.
They are easy to grow, too. I knew someone who grew them in old tires on top of his driveway. He filled the tires with good soil, plopped in the seed potatoes and covered them in straw for excellent results. I think you can even grow them in a mound of straw. Resillient little tubers, aren't they?



So far, so good when it comes to those pesty potato beetles. The plants are vigorous and happy. I think they like the straw mulch. I'll be on my guard, though, and will keep checking for those varmits. I usually walk around with a coffee can filled with water and a little Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap. Those varmits get picked off by hand and dunked in for a final bath!
Oh well, gardeners have to be tough sometimes.

Stayed tuned for more.

With all that talk about coriander, I still have a big batch of it to use in a recipe this week.
I just have to put on my thinking cap to come up with something.