Peas, Potatoes and Peat Moss

It is that time of spring when the peas are started in a pie tin in the house. I put my three varieties between wet paper towels and for a couple days and then they go in the ground. The sprouted seeds have a head start and the birds are less likely to get to festive on them.

The sign said, '26 kinds of potatoes seeds', well, that would stop my car for a look,see even if I did not want to grow potatoes. I have learned in the past couple years that potatoes rank right up there with the most commercially poisonous process of food growing there is in this country. The fact that potato farmers grow what the family eats separately from the contacted commercial fields says about about the chemicals they are required to put on those potatoes. It is hard for the average American to just start a potato patch like their grandparents had but if it was possible, it makes food sense.

Potatoes are a cool weather crop and are as easy as any crop in the world to grow. In fact, there is a popular system of growing them in straw bales or throwing the seeds on the ground and simply cover the whole area with old straw or a couple inches of grounds.

I remember my parents growing potatoes and I did try my hand at it in a small area of six feet by six feet last year. This year, I am getting a little more serious about my potato crop and using a long narrow patch of ground on the side of the house that gets the afternoon sun. I picked out four varieties for random reasons that make little sense, two early maturing and two mid-season types. I will cut these organic seed potatoes so each piece has a couple eyes and put some sealer dust on the them so they don't rot in the ground. I realize from last year that home grown potatoes are little treasure of favor.

Imagine the people in Peru have 3,000 varieties that they cultivate but basically there are two kinds, whites and reds. Whites store the better for winter and bake the better, the reds boil the better and taste nicer. Catalogs offer 50 different varsities, that is probably more than my curiosity will be able to work though.

With the addition of haskap berries, the Japanese blueberries research patch, that I planted in the fall, I am more interested in seeing that all my berry bushes are given the best opportunity to produce this season. I trim my old blue berry bushes and yesterday I spread peat moss around each one of them. There is a current thought going about gardening circle not to use peat moss but in truth there is little else that blue berry bushes love as much as peat moss. I will put my peat moss in the back corner of the garden shed and not talk about the contraband if the garden police come to my yard.