harvesting potatoes from the garden & our favorite varieties

in our neck of the woods, it's potato harvesting time! 

we missed our window of opportunity for planting sweet potatoes (tis the farm life sometimes) so we're savoring our apples of the earth. 

early one evening, during the golden hour, we harvested our potatoes from the garden. we dug into the soil with our digging forks, sticking our fingers deep into the soil, & pulled out the most beautiful red & purple potatoes.

little chip & sweet ginger were happy to snack on the potato tops. nothing goes to waste around here!

we planted purple potatoes, red potatoes & russet potatoes. the russet variety was by far the most productive, but we were thrilled with the variety in color. 

sometimes color wins over productivity on the farm. gardening should be an experience that charms all of the senses, yes?

my handsome farmer grows some beautiful potatoes!

we harvested a big basket full of potatoes from our one row. we have been sharing them with farm customers & our neighbors. they're so delicious! 

luke has been thinly slicing them into chip-like size & roasting them in the oven with a bit of s&p, fresh garlic from the garden & olive oil.

during our garden harvest, we even found a little friend.

have you ever grown potatoes in your garden? what's your favorite variety?

- natalie

a favorite recipe: herbed summer squash & potato torte

lets talk about a recipe that's worth heating up the kitchen even in the heat of the summer. i am almost always against turning on the oven in the summer. it makes for a hot house & a cranky family. of course, i needed something that would make a fine meal from all of those potatoes, red onions & summer squash we harvested from the garden. this recipe came into my life just in time.

meet the herbed summer squash & potato torte. 

that smitten kitchen lady knows how to make magic happen with a handful of vegetables. i found this recipe on her blog & with a handful of adaptations, i was able to craft up a delicious meal with simple ingredients from my pantry. 

i want to give this lady full credit for her recipe, but i would love to share my version with the ingredients we already had on hand. 

instead of crooked neck squash, i used patty pan squash. it was a wonderful use of an otherwise forgotten vegetable. i also added a handful of red onion, some sprigs of oregano & a couple of snips of lemon thyme. i am always trying to sneak in a few fresh herbs & the extra bit of seasoning really added to the dish. finally, i substituted the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour & parmesan for mozzarella. i baked it all in a 9x13 cake dish & it made for a lovely dinner. 

i would love to hear some of your favorite summer recipes with fresh ingredients from the garden!

- natalie 

weekend garden notes

my garden has been a bit neglected lately.  i was starting to think that i wouldn't even have the energy to get my garlic in (and i was trying to convince myself that i was okay with that).  this weekend we continued to have unseasonably warm weather and i forced myself to head over to my community garden to harvest my potatoes.  it was a bit disappointing (especially after i realized that i harvested fewer potatoes that i had planted in the first place!), but they will still be delicious.  i planted all blue, german butterball, and rose finn apple.  this year i tried a potato tower method, which was clearly not very successful.  i think a few of my problems were that my towers were too big around (about 3 feet in diameter) and i didn't keep them watered well enough.  if i try this again next year, i will definitely make them smaller.  what's your favorite way to plant potatoes?

i also managed to get my garlic in, which i know i will be really happy about come summer.  since i wasn't sure i was going to plant any, i hadn't purchased any new seed garlic.  i just used the garlic i grew this summer- german extra hardy and georgian fire.  i planted cloves from the largest bulbs and covered them with a pile of leaves, since i didn't have any hay or straw. 

our kale is also still going strong, and now that whatever little bugs were munching on it all summer are gone, maybe we can actually enjoy some of it.  after ignoring my garden for the last two months or so, it felt so fulfilling to get in one last garden day before winter sets in.