The Arugulapocalypse, and Tater Talk

By the time I went to take a picture it was too dark out, so you'll have to wait till tomorrow to see the big pile of arugula that I let bolt so I could get seeds out of it.  I just pulled it all up - I could make a mini bale.  It was the Arugulapocalypse.  I'll let it finish drying out outside and then rub the pods off in a paper bag.

I got the seeds from this lady in Los Angeles named Anita Sands, who gardens avidly.  We correspond, I wrote her out of the blue when I became a fan of her strange octopus of a website which you can enter at either http://home.earthlink.net/~astrology/ or visit the legacy website of Master Jules, her former boss who was a kind of California guru, at www.masterjules.net. Her frugal page is at http://home.earthlink.net/~loveguru/frugindex.htm

Anita's seeds have multiplied probably 50-fold since I planted them all.  In the spring I had lovely yummy arugula, and I got teased for being so shi-shi - and it bolted sometime in the end of May.  When it does that, it gets supremely bitter. I allowed it to hang out until now because it was shading my Black Seeded Simpson lettuce and keeping it from also bolting, but now the Simpson is bolting anyway and I want more real estate for tomatoes.  Fortunately, the lettuce isn't all that bitter even though it's bolting, but I think I'll be eating a lot of salad for the next few days, and then planting tomatoes as I eat a space for them.

I posted the other day that I was going to put 10 more tomato plants in bigger pots or the ground, and the rest were runts.  I was WRONG.  I had more like 40 more good ones.  I put 5 in Homer buckets, dung up most of my potatoes, and put 15 tomato plants in the ground.  I have to find room for 20 more somehow.  I think I can get 5 into the front yard once I get the lettuce out of there.  I'll probably try to give some away, and maybe I can conscience getting a few more Homer buckets, or something.

I got like 10 pounds of potatoes.  About a pound per plant.  It's safest to get seed potatoes for planting, because they're theoretically free of potato diseases.  But I got some organic potatoes from Whole Paycheck Foods and planted those.  I had purple and red potatoes from there.  Somehow I got volunteer Yukon Golds in the front yard from taters I must have missed getting last year.  They overwintered and surprised me with a resurrection.

From planting color potatoes, I can say if you want volume, don't bother with the purple potatoes.  They give a puny harvest and if you accidentally leave one in the sun, you won't be able to see the green in it, you'll have to detect the cyanide by it making your tongue tingle.  Kind of annoying. (don't eat any potato that makes your tongue tingle).   The red ones do okay for yield.  Yukon Gold is always a good bet, too.  The purple ones, however, are still fun even if they're not too prolific.  I'd still plant one or two of those as an accent, because then your potato salad will be colorful.  Don't put vinegar on colored potatoes.  It blanches them out.

Tomorrow, I'm going to make drip emitters out of the tops of soda bottles I'd cut to make seedling pots from the bottoms.  The top of a soda bottle is also a good funnel, in a pinch.