Unexpected Harvest

Every year I plant a garden.  I always put in some of the tried and true plants - the ones I know I can grow successfully.  And most years, I try an experiment of some kind.  This year I tried container gardening.  For the most part, it was a dismal failure.  Probably my fault, but whatever, it didn't work.

One thing I tried was to grow potatoes in burlap sacks.  It seemed reasonable at the time.  To grow potatoes, you have to start the seed potatoes in a trench and gradually mound up the dirt as the vines grow.  The new potatoes form along the stems and need to be kept underground so they don't turn green in the light and become poisonous.  Burlap sacks can be topped off with fresh dirt, making this a perfectly good idea.

Well, the roots grew out of the lower part of the sacks and the vines didn't look as healthy as I had hoped.  I finally planted them, sacks and all, in the ground as a last ditch effort. "Ditch", get it?  The vines died and rotted.  I finally pulled up everything I could see, dumped the dirt and tossed it all in the trash.  A valuable lesson - don't do it that way ever again.  lol

Another one of my experiments was to plant a small herb inside the rotted stump of a tree.  Maybe that would have been a good idea, except the plant does better in partial shade and this stump was in broad daylight.  It was hard to keep the soil moist enough for the poor little thing to thrive.

After watching my herb choke and gasp for a couple of weeks, I decided I'd better put it in the ground alongside the rest of my former container experiments.  The best place to put it was in the spot where I used to have the potato sacks.  So I grabbed my garden gloves and my trowel and went back to do a little transplanting. 

Lo and behold, I struck potato!!!  The baby potatoes didn't die when the stems were pulled.  I rooted around to find all the potatoes and came away with a little more than I put into it. 

I gave up on one plant and, in trying to save another, I found that the first one had borne fruit after all.  There's a sermon in there somewhere.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi