Return from 4 sq ft devoted to potatoes
The Dirt to Dinner project is about creating a little bit of food independence in each of the kids who works with us. Making them aware of what it takes to grow the food they eat, showing them how they can do it, and helping them raise healthy food that goes directly from the ground onto their lunch plates. And, luckily for us, the whole process has been delicious.
Mashed Bounty
Today we pulled some Yukon Gold-style potatoes out of the modest 4 sq ft patch where they had been growing and quickly boiled and mashed them. They hardly needed butter and were immediatly pronounced a success. The flesh of the potatoes is yellower than what I want for tomorrow’s red-white-and-blue potato salad, but it may have to do. Though I guess I could skin the red-skinned potatoes for the white, keep the skins on for the red, and, well, I still have my fingers crossed on the blues, but we haven’t raided any of them yet. Not one peek under all that dirt, compost and mulch. Though I have high hopes, we did plant thirty potato plants! There better be enough blue potatoes for one dish of potato salad tomorrow!
Tomato Season Finally Begins
One thing I know we will have is tomatoes. They have started ripening in the warm weather and, so far, we have been eating the Principe Borghese drying tomatoes fresh. They are tough to resist. Especially with some of the blue flowering basil growing in the front bed and balsamic vinegar. These guys ended up in a salad bowl so fast they were still warm from the sun as we ate them. But just as soon as there are other tomatoes ripe, I really do plan to get out the drying recipes. I swear!
My bet is that the Costaluto Genovese will be the next to be ready. We’ve had one or two of them already. Some people call them ugly tomaotes because of the deep ridges they develop but they taste great.
They are the most robust tomato vines I have ever seen. If you are out late in the evening watering too close to this thing, I swear it might toss one brawny arm over your shoulders and keep you there all night telling you its garden tales as the moon rises.
There are no zucchini plants in the Dirt to Dinner garden, for reasons that will be obvious to you by August, if they aren’t already. ;-) Instead I’ve been trying to learn more about the squash varieties we do have going. For instance, did you know that the ‘pumpkin’ you buy canned to make into pumpkin pie is actually a squash that is most closely related to Butternut? I’m loving all the details available at 
I think I remember that the potato sacks we used each hold fifteen gallons, and they are nearly full of soil at this point as well. Each sack is planted with four or five potatoes, the same amount we used in the much smaller basket of La Rattes. So maybe we’ll find out the consequences of crowding when we compare the harvests, but it will be hard to interpret, since we used different varieties.
From Dirt to Dinner 