Three of the vegetables I have included in The Survival Garden, Plant a Garden to Last All Winter that Doesn’t need to be Canned Frozen, or Dehydrated are garlic, potatoes and sweet potatoes. These the focus of this week’s homesteading project.
Garlic
The garlic is now dry enough to store. I took the garlic that was damaged and prepped it for drying into garlic powder. Here’s how I did it!
The Potato Harvest
This past week, we finished harvesting our fabric bags of potatoes. We have eaten some but have about 50 pounds of Norland potatoes ready to eat during the summer. We have more potatoes growing in the ground, but those aren’t ready to harvest yet. This is fine. This will help stretch out the potato harvest, so it lasts longer.
After we harvested the potatoes, I immediately put the soil back into the bags and planted sweet potato slips. This gives us a second harvest of calorie and nutrient-dense food that should take us through most of the year.
Sweet Potatoes
A week ago on Saturday, I bought 20 sweet potato slips for 10 cents per sweet potato slip which was a steal! I put them in two jars of water to soak until I was able to plant them. Before I planted them, they were already beginning to develop roots.
The soil was left over from the potatoes I grew in the fabric pots so these sweet potatoes were practically free to get into the soil.
I planted the sweet potato slips in the cool of the evening. To plant the potato slips, I simply scooped the soil out of the center of the bag. I laid the slip along the soil and covered the soil back over it. I kept the sweet potato plant leaves above the ground but covered as much of the stem as possible. I am now watering the sweet potatoes twice per day until the plants are well established.
Other Harvests This Week
We’re harvesting other foods as well. I harvested more broccoli from the two broccoli plants. It amazes me how much each of these plants is producing as long as I am harvesting them regularly.
I harvested more hot peppers this week and took them to the farmers’ market because I don’t have a use for them right now. This is a better decision than putting them in the refrigerator until I do have a use for them. Plus, because I harvested them, more will be growing over the next few months and I’ll have plenty of hot peppers when I am ready to use them with the tomatoes which are still not ready to pick.
For more about how to grow more food that doesn’t require a lot of preparation to store purchase The Survival Garden.
The Survival Garden
The Perpetual Homesteader 