We have corn tassels and a couple of cobs starting!

Anya and I weeded our potato patch, and found a couple of new potatoes at the surface.

Our potato plants are huge — and evidently the weather has been sufficiently odd that potato SEEDS are forming. I’ve seen potato plants with flowers before, but the little tomato-looking green things were new to me. We can also tell that part of our potato bed is amazing for growing plants, some of it is ok-ish, and the right-hand third is too shaded. The potatoes and sweet potatoes along the left-hand side look like a massive pile of vegetation. The middle part … well, they look like potato plants to which I am accustomed. The right-hand side … there’s one little sweet potato vine that’s about five inches tall.

These are all growing in a leaf mulch that formed where the previous owner dumped the grass clippings and leaves from the bottom of the property. After we harvest the potatoes, I plan to mix all of the soil together (the stuff from the left may have its nutrients depleted, but the stuff on the right is essentially unused), add some compost, and then use this as a potato bed next year. Then we’ll start a rotation – definitely bush beans, but I’m hoping to build a trellis next winter & have a wall of vine beans or peas behind  the bush beans.