The clueless gardener

sweet corn

Just call me the clueless gardener. (Although I hope to change that.)

As you can see above, our corn is doing well. It’s been so great to see it progress from tiny sprouts to where it is today. I hope it continues to shoot up. Our tomato plants are doing pretty well too so far. They are blooming, so I’m taking that as a good sign.

However, the peas & carrots are a different matter. Only one little pea plant sprouted, and it quickly keeled over. Two carrots out of the many that I planted have sprouted. They seem to be growing fine, but…

You see, I realized that I have absolutely no idea how to tell when they are ready to be harvested. I could try digging them up after a prescribed period of time, but I don’t know when I planted them. So that may be a little tricky. Is there a way to tell that they’re done by the size of their greenery? If not, I may just have to chalk them up to a fun experiment.

Same goes for our potato. That’s right. I planted ONE potato. I really just threw it in there because I’d forgotten a potato in the fridge, and it had sprouted. It seemed a shame to toss it, so I planted it instead. It seems to be growing gangbusters. It’s just that yet again, I have no idea how to tell when it’s “done”. Oh well, it’s pretty, if nothing else :)

I’m just thrilled that so many plants are growing, period.

View Comments (6)
  • How much was your initial investment in your garden? I am considering doing this and wonder how long the return on my investment (not including time) would be.

  • Oh, I put a lot of money into it. I’m definitely not doing this to save money! (Although that will *eventually* be a nice side benefit if we live here long enough. I spent about $250 altogether, including $72 for very long drinking water safe hose. I wanted to give gardening a try though because I’m tired of the really yucky veggies that we get down here to eat. I’d also gotten food poisoning from some grocery-store strawberries. I don’t like not knowing where my food has been. Maybe I’ll write a post detailing the costs a little later.

  • I am having the same potato adventure you are & the greenery coming from them is beautiful. My sister in Iowa said when the vines die the potatoes are ready to harvest.

  • When the carrots are ripe depends on what kind they are. The really big ones take longer than the shorter ones. Sometimes you can see the orange tops just at the edge of the soil. You can pull one up carefully to see how it looks. If it is too small, sometimes you can tuck it back in the ground for a little longer. Do you still have the seed package? It will tell you how long until harvest. Potatoes grown here (in northern Illinois) aren’t ready until late summer or early fall. But we don’t put them in until the end of May. They rot if the soil is too cold. They are really fun to grow. You don’t know how many you will get until you dig them up.

  • wow… I think you are doing wonderfully. Your inspiring me to think about gardening. Maybe when the kids are a bit bigger I’ll have more time to devote to it.

  • Getting carrots to sprout seems to be tricky business, but Darling found a trick online that seemed to help. For the first week after we planted ours, we covered the area with newspaper and kept it moist. Most of them came up.

    As for when they’re ready, too late is better than too soon. Our, after a couple of months, are still quite tiny (five inches long, maybe a centimeter thick), but they taste delicious in salads.

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