What's up with the drama in the title?
So maybe referring to potatoes as “The Beast” in this context is reaching a bit, but stand just about anything next to a passion flower and it’s going to look like a mud fence.
For me, there is nothing more beautiful that just about any member of the Passiflora family. Some of the common names for member of the Passiflora genus are Passion Flower, Maypop (my personal favorite) and Granadilla.
More practical information would be that they are hardy or semi-hardy perennial vines that can reach up to 30 feet. They carry stunning flowers, generally of white and purple (although many other varieties exist) that bloom from late summer to early autumn. Those members of Passiflora who fruit, will carry sweet and juicy egg shaped fruits in the autumn.
The Handbook of Herbal Formulas describes passion flower as having been used “as a sedative for treating insomnia and leaves no hangover. As an antispasmodic, it is helpful in Parkinson’s disease, asthma, seizures and hysteria. It relieves nerve pain in conditions like neuralgia and shingles.” It has been stated that American Indians used passion flower root as a poultice for boils, cuts, earache and inflammation.
I’ve read a lot about the difficulties of starting passion flower from seed. Some sources state that the seeds can take up to a year to germinate, if they ever do at all! Yikes. They say the easiest way to grow passion flower is from cuttings or from nursery plants. Passion flower is a perennial, hardy to Zone 6. While the USDA classifies our area as on the border of Zones 7 and 8, I can say with relative certainty that there are micro areas of Rogue River and Wimer that could be Zone 6.
Passion flower likes well-drained or sandy soil with full or partial sun. It will grow in relatively poor, sandy or acidic soils but reports indicate that it does best with a slow release fertilizer like cottonseed meal at the time of planting. Since this is a vine, choose a location where a permanent trellis can be constructed or installed. This plant produces for several years, so your trellis will need to last at least that long.
Johnny’s Selected Seed Co. of Winslow, Maine offered us the following guidelines for starting passion flower from seed:
Germination for passion flower from seed can be slow and erratic. Sow seeds in flats at a depth of about a half-inch. Keep the seeds moist and maintain a temperature of 85 to 90 degrees. Seedlings benefit from a heated seed mat. Nighttime temperatures should not go any lower than 70 degrees. Germination usually begins in 30 days and could take several months. When the true leaves appear, transplant the seedlings into larger cell trays. The United Kingdom Gardener’s Guild recommends soaking the seeds for a day or two before planting.
In the later spring, when dangers from frost have passed and seedlings are three to four inches tall, transplant outside in well-prepared locations, twelve to eighteen inches apart. Have your trellis in place at the time of planting, as passion flower will spread quickly through its runners once established.
Once your plants are established, you can make cuttings to share with your friends in the late summer or early fall. Gardeners experienced with passion flower pretty much agree that this is the preferred method. Provide bottom heat and mist your cuttings regularly. Use a rooting hormone powder when settling the cuttings into the rooting medium. Rooted cuttings are generally ready in three to six weeks.
Back in June, I wrote about growing potatoes. Someone said to me, “Why are you giving us this information when we can’t use it until next spring?” Soooo…without further adieu…let’s revisit the potato.
Potatoes are one of the easiest root crops there is to grow. They’re fun and a small area or container or trash can or even a trash bag (really!) can provide a nice yield of this popular veggie. Early spring is the best time to plant them, so here is some information on some of the best ways to grow them in the garden.
Choose the varieties that work best with what you cook most. We like new potatoes with peas and gravy (made with veggie broth, this is a nice, filling vegetarian dish).
Some popular varieties and their uses are:
White Rose: Good for boiling and salad, only fair for storing.
Russet: Good for baking and boiling, not so great for storing.
Netted Gem: Great for baking and stores well.
Red Pontiac: Very popular, versatile, stores well.
There are lots of other varieties that have excellent qualities as well. Of course, there’s the Yukon Golds (and other yellow fleshed varieties and the novelty potatoes. Purple ones leap immediately to mind, although the thought of blue food? I don’t know; there’s just something not quite right about blue food.
There are two schools of thought on selecting potatoes for planting. One is that you should only plant certified seed potatoes, which assures you that they are free of insects, disease and has not been treated with a growth retardant. Yes, store bought potatoes that are not certified organic are sometimes treated with a chemical to keep them from sprouting. Yum. Garden centers, nurseries, and the usual places generally feature seed potatoes early in the spring planting season.
Having said all that, I personally know people who have grown a crop of potatoes from potatoes they bought at the grocery store or farmer’s market. Yep, they bought organic. You can cut up a potato for planting as long as each piece has two, but preferably three or more, growth eyes. After cutting, let that cut surface callus up a bit before planting.
Sprouting your potatoes – also known as “chitting” – is a way to give your potatoes a head start. To chit your potatoes – either whole potatoes or seed potatoes – stand them in a light, warm place. Don’t stick them in a dark cupboard; that’s not going to work. An egg container is an excellent container for this. You will want to look for fat, green shoots and plant them when the shoots are about an inch long. Leaving several shoots on your potato will give you numerous smaller potatoes, while leaving only one growing will give you fewer, but larger spuds.
I’m going to cover the non-traditional methods of growing, rather than sending you out with a spade to dig for hours.
In straw: In the Scandinavian countries, growing spuds in straw or other material has been the norm for ages. Lay your spuds out above the ground, cover them up, water as usual. As they grow taller, add more straw/material around the base of the plants. The result: super clean potatoes with no back breaking digging.
In plastic garbage bags: The best ones for this project are those construction clean up bags; they’re thicker. Fold down the top part of the bag and put in about 6 inches of soil – either garden soil or bagged soil. Plant your spuds. As they grow taller, add more soil until your bag is ½ to ¾ full. Punch some holes in the bottom for drainage. You can place your bag any place that’s convenient and this can actually be your first crop of the year. The black plastic will help warm things up and your spuds will grow like gang-busters.
In plastic garbage cans: Use the same method as above. I like this idea a lot, but the fact that they are very heavy when full of spuds would eliminate this process, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be easier to use the garbage bags, where your only harvesting tool would be a scissors to cut the bag open?
If you have a number of old tires lying about, you can stack those up, plant some seed potatoes in the bottom and fill the stack as the plant grows. I’ve heard that the average yield from stack spuds is around 15 pounds per stack, with one reader reporting a whopping 38 pounds of red rose potatoes.
Wire cage method: Get yourself a length of wire fencing. Probably not field fencing, but orchard fence or larger hardware cloth would work well. You want your cage to be about three feet in diameter and around four feet tall. Fasten the ends together so that it forms a sturdy cage, but one that you can open up later, at harvest time. Prepare your soil by adding some compost to garden soil, or start out with bagged soil. Set your cage at its preferred location. Add some straw to the bottom, then about 6 inches of soil. Plant the potatoes as you normally would – about three inches deep. Plant five or six per cage. As the potatoes grow, keep filling the space inside the fence with more soil and compost. Don’t bury the plants; bring that soil level up around two to three inches at a time inside the cylinder. Soon, your cages will be filled with dirt, compost and potatoes.
You won’t want to water your potatoes too much or you’ll wind up with black or hollow centers. Watering sporadically will give you some really strange shaped potatoes. As a guideline, water weekly during warmer weather. If you’re growing in cages or other containers, these tend to dry out more quickly. Poke your finger a few inches in to test the soil.
To harvest new potatoes, watch for your plants to start blooming. Then harvest. To allow for mature, storage size potatoes, wait until the vines yellow and start to die back. If you’re using bags, cut them open with scissors. Wire cages simply require a wire cutter or gloves. With tire stacks, you can pretty much just tip them over as you would with garbage cans or containers. The straw method requires only rooting around to pick out the nice, clean potatoes that have grown there.
For me, there is nothing more beautiful that just about any member of the Passiflora family. Some of the common names for member of the Passiflora genus are Passion Flower, Maypop (my personal favorite) and Granadilla.
More practical information would be that they are hardy or semi-hardy perennial vines that can reach up to 30 feet. They carry stunning flowers, generally of white and purple (although many other varieties exist) that bloom from late summer to early autumn. Those members of Passiflora who fruit, will carry sweet and juicy egg shaped fruits in the autumn.
The Handbook of Herbal Formulas describes passion flower as having been used “as a sedative for treating insomnia and leaves no hangover. As an antispasmodic, it is helpful in Parkinson’s disease, asthma, seizures and hysteria. It relieves nerve pain in conditions like neuralgia and shingles.” It has been stated that American Indians used passion flower root as a poultice for boils, cuts, earache and inflammation.
I’ve read a lot about the difficulties of starting passion flower from seed. Some sources state that the seeds can take up to a year to germinate, if they ever do at all! Yikes. They say the easiest way to grow passion flower is from cuttings or from nursery plants. Passion flower is a perennial, hardy to Zone 6. While the USDA classifies our area as on the border of Zones 7 and 8, I can say with relative certainty that there are micro areas of Rogue River and Wimer that could be Zone 6.
Passion flower likes well-drained or sandy soil with full or partial sun. It will grow in relatively poor, sandy or acidic soils but reports indicate that it does best with a slow release fertilizer like cottonseed meal at the time of planting. Since this is a vine, choose a location where a permanent trellis can be constructed or installed. This plant produces for several years, so your trellis will need to last at least that long.
Johnny’s Selected Seed Co. of Winslow, Maine offered us the following guidelines for starting passion flower from seed:
Germination for passion flower from seed can be slow and erratic. Sow seeds in flats at a depth of about a half-inch. Keep the seeds moist and maintain a temperature of 85 to 90 degrees. Seedlings benefit from a heated seed mat. Nighttime temperatures should not go any lower than 70 degrees. Germination usually begins in 30 days and could take several months. When the true leaves appear, transplant the seedlings into larger cell trays. The United Kingdom Gardener’s Guild recommends soaking the seeds for a day or two before planting.
In the later spring, when dangers from frost have passed and seedlings are three to four inches tall, transplant outside in well-prepared locations, twelve to eighteen inches apart. Have your trellis in place at the time of planting, as passion flower will spread quickly through its runners once established.
Once your plants are established, you can make cuttings to share with your friends in the late summer or early fall. Gardeners experienced with passion flower pretty much agree that this is the preferred method. Provide bottom heat and mist your cuttings regularly. Use a rooting hormone powder when settling the cuttings into the rooting medium. Rooted cuttings are generally ready in three to six weeks.
Back in June, I wrote about growing potatoes. Someone said to me, “Why are you giving us this information when we can’t use it until next spring?” Soooo…without further adieu…let’s revisit the potato.
Potatoes are one of the easiest root crops there is to grow. They’re fun and a small area or container or trash can or even a trash bag (really!) can provide a nice yield of this popular veggie. Early spring is the best time to plant them, so here is some information on some of the best ways to grow them in the garden.
Choose the varieties that work best with what you cook most. We like new potatoes with peas and gravy (made with veggie broth, this is a nice, filling vegetarian dish).
Some popular varieties and their uses are:
White Rose: Good for boiling and salad, only fair for storing.
Russet: Good for baking and boiling, not so great for storing.
Netted Gem: Great for baking and stores well.
Red Pontiac: Very popular, versatile, stores well.
There are lots of other varieties that have excellent qualities as well. Of course, there’s the Yukon Golds (and other yellow fleshed varieties and the novelty potatoes. Purple ones leap immediately to mind, although the thought of blue food? I don’t know; there’s just something not quite right about blue food.
There are two schools of thought on selecting potatoes for planting. One is that you should only plant certified seed potatoes, which assures you that they are free of insects, disease and has not been treated with a growth retardant. Yes, store bought potatoes that are not certified organic are sometimes treated with a chemical to keep them from sprouting. Yum. Garden centers, nurseries, and the usual places generally feature seed potatoes early in the spring planting season.
Having said all that, I personally know people who have grown a crop of potatoes from potatoes they bought at the grocery store or farmer’s market. Yep, they bought organic. You can cut up a potato for planting as long as each piece has two, but preferably three or more, growth eyes. After cutting, let that cut surface callus up a bit before planting.
Sprouting your potatoes – also known as “chitting” – is a way to give your potatoes a head start. To chit your potatoes – either whole potatoes or seed potatoes – stand them in a light, warm place. Don’t stick them in a dark cupboard; that’s not going to work. An egg container is an excellent container for this. You will want to look for fat, green shoots and plant them when the shoots are about an inch long. Leaving several shoots on your potato will give you numerous smaller potatoes, while leaving only one growing will give you fewer, but larger spuds.
I’m going to cover the non-traditional methods of growing, rather than sending you out with a spade to dig for hours.
In straw: In the Scandinavian countries, growing spuds in straw or other material has been the norm for ages. Lay your spuds out above the ground, cover them up, water as usual. As they grow taller, add more straw/material around the base of the plants. The result: super clean potatoes with no back breaking digging.
In plastic garbage bags: The best ones for this project are those construction clean up bags; they’re thicker. Fold down the top part of the bag and put in about 6 inches of soil – either garden soil or bagged soil. Plant your spuds. As they grow taller, add more soil until your bag is ½ to ¾ full. Punch some holes in the bottom for drainage. You can place your bag any place that’s convenient and this can actually be your first crop of the year. The black plastic will help warm things up and your spuds will grow like gang-busters.
In plastic garbage cans: Use the same method as above. I like this idea a lot, but the fact that they are very heavy when full of spuds would eliminate this process, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be easier to use the garbage bags, where your only harvesting tool would be a scissors to cut the bag open?
If you have a number of old tires lying about, you can stack those up, plant some seed potatoes in the bottom and fill the stack as the plant grows. I’ve heard that the average yield from stack spuds is around 15 pounds per stack, with one reader reporting a whopping 38 pounds of red rose potatoes.
Wire cage method: Get yourself a length of wire fencing. Probably not field fencing, but orchard fence or larger hardware cloth would work well. You want your cage to be about three feet in diameter and around four feet tall. Fasten the ends together so that it forms a sturdy cage, but one that you can open up later, at harvest time. Prepare your soil by adding some compost to garden soil, or start out with bagged soil. Set your cage at its preferred location. Add some straw to the bottom, then about 6 inches of soil. Plant the potatoes as you normally would – about three inches deep. Plant five or six per cage. As the potatoes grow, keep filling the space inside the fence with more soil and compost. Don’t bury the plants; bring that soil level up around two to three inches at a time inside the cylinder. Soon, your cages will be filled with dirt, compost and potatoes.
You won’t want to water your potatoes too much or you’ll wind up with black or hollow centers. Watering sporadically will give you some really strange shaped potatoes. As a guideline, water weekly during warmer weather. If you’re growing in cages or other containers, these tend to dry out more quickly. Poke your finger a few inches in to test the soil.
To harvest new potatoes, watch for your plants to start blooming. Then harvest. To allow for mature, storage size potatoes, wait until the vines yellow and start to die back. If you’re using bags, cut them open with scissors. Wire cages simply require a wire cutter or gloves. With tire stacks, you can pretty much just tip them over as you would with garbage cans or containers. The straw method requires only rooting around to pick out the nice, clean potatoes that have grown there.
To store your spuds, keep them in the dark at around 40 degrees.
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