Wrapping up the old year, planning for the new!

I have taken a bit of a blog-acation.  It has been nice, though I am feeling very out of touch with my fellow garden bloggers.  Hope you all are doing well, staying healthy, and enjoying the seed catalogs as they stream in.

I did some ordering this past week, it was all about tubers.  Sweet and 'Irish' potatoes have been checked off the list.  Georgia Jets and Vardaman (a bush variety) were ordered for sweets, Swedish Peanut Fingerling, Caribe, and Red Cloud for the standard potato varieties.  I started with a few more pounds of seed for this past year's crop, but as I have mentioned just a few (wink, wink) times in the past I am short on space going forth.....so the varieties and total pounds of seed were slashed for 2011.  But no worries, I plan on going back to full scale potato production for 2012, so that helps make it a little less painful.

Still deliberating over eggplant varieties.  Oh, also ordered some Red Baron onion sets to plant in the new garlic bed.  I believe I grew this variety from seed in the past, but the sets were available from Moose Tubers (my potato source) so I went for it.  It will be good for the soil biology to have something growing in it until garlic planting time.

Here is the dirt on the potato varieties from Fedco/Moose Tubers:

Swedish Peanut

These fingerlings were the pleasant surprise in our potato patch this year. We’ve come to expect that our late-season fingerlings will be troubled by rhizoctonia, but these proved otherwise. One September, we pulled ten plants and filled a bushel with spotless thumb-sized spuds, even late in the season. As for taste, it is the only potato that we let ourselves eat before it goes to market. Dry and golden flesh; this year’s pick for “really soaking up the butter.” Seed in short supply; order early. BACK!

Caribe

An early digger, and a nice size. Its brilliant purple skin fades in storage, but you won’t have any left to store! For a summer barbecue, make your potato salad shout with Caribe, Red Gold, and a Yukon or two. Even though its name, pronounced ca-REE-bay, invokes the Caribbean, it was released by AgCanada in 1984 to grow in the Maritime provinces so it’s also well suited to our northeastern climate. Caribe has a creamy flavor, a medium-dry texture, and snow-white flesh. You can dig them late into the season, just make sure you hill well, and you will get some gigantors. Medium-sized plants are high yielding with purplish blue flowers. Resistant to scab and storage rot.

Red Cloud

An excellent choice for a red storage potato. With super-dry flesh, your mouth will water as you mash and fluff these pearly white potaters. Named for the Oglala Sioux chief, you will find these plants equally burly, resisting scab, early blight, hollow heart, heat stress, and drought. These plants are medium sized, with spreading vines and dark violet flowers. Supply limited; order early. BACK!