New Potatoes, Thinning, and Tomato Pruning

1st Raspberry!

Raspberry picking is just days away!

This week brought the first real summer sun of the season! Finally summer has come to Maine. 3 days of beautiful blue skies and plenty of warmth and sunshine. Some rain tonight and then hopefully more sunshine is coming! So it was a busy few days in the garden.

A few carrots from 1st thinning

These carrots and a few more went to Boston to my daughter Erin. Carrots have always been what she most anticipates from the garden. They are her favorite garden treat. As a little girl with beautiful blond curly hair she would sit in the garden and literally eat my entire planting. She would yank those orange beauties right out of the soil and eat them! I just couldn't stand watching her eat them without first cleaning them so I just had to give her a bowl of water to rinse them off!

Something that needs to be done as tomato plants begin to take off is to remove "suckers." Below are two photos of the same tomato plant. I went through a week ago and pruned suckers from all my tomatoes and forgot to take photos. But today I found another good example to photograph for you to see. In this first photo notice the tiny stem coming up from the middle of that "V". That's a sucker. You break that off. The reason these need to be removed is that they, the suckers, take energy from the plant and tomato plants need lots of energy for making those lovely tomatoes! So yank that puppy right off! Gently of course. I pinch them off.

Tomato Sucker

Now in this next picture you can see the same "V" but the sucker is gone. I picked it off. You want to keep an eye on tomato plants and do that at every "V" you find that has one growing out of it. BUT....if you've missed a sucker and it's grown to the point that it has flowers on it or even tomatoes on it then leave it. After all you want flowers and tomatoes!

Tomato with sucker removed

NEW POTATOES! YUMMY! As much as I love digging potatoes later in the summer and fall I love to dig the season's first "New Potatoes" even more. New Potatoes are just that, new to the year; they haven't been stored. They are dug and eaten. Usually they are quite a bit smaller than the ones dug later in the season or the ones you buy at the grocery store. I love the marble sized ones but you can see by these photos I waited too long and they are a big bigger than marbles. But they will still be wonderful. I love them boiled, with skins left on, and served with a dab of butter and fresh peas! Add some mint or chives if you like. Absolute heaven! I usually just grow some red potatoes and some Yukon Gold potatoes. I've grown fingerlings and purples too but my family seems to enjoy these best so that's what I've stuck with.

Newly dug Yukon Gold potatoes

Red Potato Plants, Newly Dug New Potatoes, and Pitchfork for Digging

You need to be careful digging potatoes. You follow the stem to the ground level. Which can be a challenge since you have tons of hay piled up around each plant. You pull the hay back and I usually stick my pitchfork in about a foot or more away from the plant and turn up the soil. If you dig closer you may fork a potato and you don't want to pierce a potato. If you do that's OK, just be sure to clean it well and eat it soon. You can't store pierced potatoes. Anyway, once you overturn the soil you can gently but firmly tug the plant up out of the soil. Some tiny potatoes will cling to the plant's roots. Some will fall off and you have to use your hands to dig through the soil looking for the hidden gems. Then the plant, if it's healthy (disease free) and not infested can just go into the compost pile.

Leeks that need to be thinned

Above is a photo of a row of leeks that is in dire need of thinning. The great thing about thinning is if you wait just long enough you can get some that are large enough to use for eating and small enough to still be very tender and delicate tasting. By thinning things like carrots, beets, and onions such as leeks you make more room for the remaining plants to make nice big roots. Since we eat the roots of carrots, beets, and onions we want to give the roots plenty of room to develop the roots that we are going to harvest. Below is a photo of the first thinning of leeks. As you can see they will need another thinning but this is a good start. I used the beets and leeks that I thinned for a stir fry. I would have also used the carrots but you know where they went to!

That's it for now. Off to make another batch of strawberry jam and a strawberry shortcake. We are still getting a ton of strawberries!

Next week....compost tea and building a wood pallet compost bin. Have a great week and remember to take time to smell the flowers and spend time in your garden or at your local farmers' market. Support local, organic agriculture!