Today we finished digging the potatoes.  We got a very good yield from the Red Pontiac potatoes.  We got 20 pounds of each to plant and got more than twice as many red ones that the yellow so next year we will plant all Red Pontiac.  Also there are almost no scabs on the red potatoes and more on the Yukon Gold. 

Here are the red potatoes we dug yesterday.  They are now in the pantry in the cellar.  This is the coolest place we have to store any vegetables but when the summer gets into full swing this room is really too warm for potatoes so they don’t last all winter for us.  So Joe had better take a lot to eat now.

This is how we store them.  This is the good potatoes from the four short rows yesterday.  The yellow potatoes that we dug from the two longest rows the day before only filled a little over one half this many.  And today’s three rows will fill another box this size so after planting the same amount of seed potatoes of both Yukon Gold and Red Pontiac you can see why we are going all Red Pontiac next year.  

These are the Yukon Gold that were good enough for storage.

These are the larger  potatoes we got today.

Today’s potatoes now have to be laid out on a sheet in the cellar and allowed to dry.  Then tomorrow morning I brush them and box them up for storage.  The ones that are cut or too small are set aside and used first because they don’t keep as long.

These are the small and bruised potatoes form yesterday.  We have at least this many today.  This is the brush I used to clean the potatoes, it is an old shoe polishing brush and who polishes shoes any more?  

These are today’s smaller potatoes and todays zucchini.  I pick any zucchini that is ready to pick and had planned to can some but now with a shortage of jars I guess we will not be canning any zucchini.  We have a neighbor who does not have a garden this year and we will give them all the zucchini they would like.  Also in this basket are the green beans we picked.  They are starting to come now and we had the first meal of them today and they are so nice.  We should have beans every day now.  The new beans in the corn are budding now and Norman just put in four more rows of beans.  

Here are the beans that are just coming up in the kitchen garden.  We will use the jars we have for canning tomatoes and green beans,  These are the two things that everyone likes the best and if we sell the farm someone else will have beans to can for the winter.  

This is another angle of the kitchen garden, you can see we have lots of beets coming also and will need to start harvesting those pretty soon also.  The onions are getting pretty good size now too but we use lots of onions so will not have to worry about having too many of these.  

The lilies are still blooming and will last for about another week. 

The raspberries are coming along pretty fast now.  The berries are only on the last year’s cane.  Now also is the new cane that will have the berries next year.  It is just that it gets very crowded with both canes in the patch so the new cane grows out and gets into the clothes line area.

These are in the clothes line area. 

These are the ones growing out over the lawn, when the raspberries are picked and I can cut out the old cane I will tie these up to wire and get them back where they belong.

This shows you how the new and old cane are in together and you can see if I tie up the new cane now I would not be able to pick the berries when they are ripe. We are all ready for these to get ripe we are now using the last jar of jelly so that is the first thing I will do with the raspberries when they are ready.  Have a great day.