Hilltop Beds

In keeping with my "cutting back" strategy this year, I only planted up three of the six annual veg beds on the hilltop.

One bed contained the garlic, which was harvested a couple of weeks ago (I wrote about it in THIS post) and is currently drying in the garage.


The 2nd bed contains the onions.  In the past, I would have pulled them at this stage, but I think I was harvesting a bit too early.  Last year, time got away from me and I left them in the bed until early September.  By that point, they were completely yellowed and some tops were even dried out.  I was worried that they had stayed in the ground too long, but soon realized that they were just fine and, in fact, seemed to have put on some growth in those last few weeks.

Still a couple of weeks to go until harvest

Last years onions also stored phenomenally well.  I just brought the last dozen up from the basement and all were firm with only two starting to sprout (and even those were still fine to use).

Last of the onions brought up from the basement

The final bed holds the potatoes.  This year, I grew the same three varieties as last year:  Yukon Gold, Kennebec and Viking.  This was primarily because I couldn't get to the store to purchase new seed potatoes so I ended up using what I already had.  Luckily, just like the onions, the potatoes had stored  very well so I didn't have an issue when it came to planting stock.

Yukon Gold & most of the Viking have completely died back,
with Kennebec not far behind

Once all of the foliage dies back and they have sat in the ground for a couple of weeks to "toughen up" for storage, I will harvest them - this usually works out to be around mid to late September.

And, as is the case most years, a few volunteer potato plants came up in last years bed (this years garlic bed).  Instead of pulling them when I harvested the garlic, I decided to work around them so that any tubers would continue developing.  You just never know what kind of crop a volunteer patch will give you.  A couple of years ago, I had a fairly bad potato harvest in the regular bed and it was the volunteer potatoes that saved the day.

Volunteer potatoes in the garlic bed
may give us a few more tasty tubers

In preparation for the upcoming harvest, the water to both the onion and potato beds has been turned off and, other than keeping on top of weeds, the only thing to do now is wait.  Good thing too as I am plenty busy in the next little while planting up a carload (literally!) of plants that I purchased this past weekend.

2020 Plant Haul
(in front of the beds as well as on top of the bed on the left)

Some say I went a tad crazy, but I contend that I was doing a bit of catch up as it was my first visit to a garden center this year.  Well, that's my story anyway and I'm sticking to it 😜

Comments

  1. Your garden is impressively productive, Margaret! As to your recent plant haul, all of your readers, myself included, are undoubtedly envious. And, if I'm honest and counted all of what I've picked up at my local garden center and what I've purchased by mail order, I believe I'd have a haul of par with yours.

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  2. I am always so impressed with your garden's productivity. I should try better at growing cool season vegetables.

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  3. It's brilliant having enough onions in storage to last until the next year's harvest is ready, they certainly stored well all this time. I think many people will be making up for lost time now that the garden centres are open again. It looks like you've got your work cut out planting that lot up.

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  4. Last year our potato harvest was poor so I’m hoping for better this year. We just had to buy one lot of onions last year but I’m not sure that we will make it this year.

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  5. Onion mad fan here!!! I love the idea of growing my own but have never tried. I think I'll give it a go since I eat them with almost anything. Definitely one of my goals for the upcoming months!

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    Replies
    1. Once you grow your own, you will never go back! And trying out the dozens of different varieties you can grow from seed...definitely addictive :)

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