I bought a few different varieties of seed potatoes when they first came out in May at the local garden centre.  This year I decided to go with Red Chieftan, AC Chaleur, Irish Cobbler, Banana and French Fingerling.  I laid the potatoes out on plates and found a cool, sunny spot in my basement by the window.  They sat there for a few weeks.

The day before I wanted to put them in the ground, I brought them upstairs:

Lots of growth on the eyes.  Next you have to cut them, ensuring that all pieces have at least one eye.  First, hold the potato in one hand and a sharp knife in the other.  Turn the potato around to see which is the best way to make your cut:

Using your knife, make a clean cut through the potato.  These ones are kind of small so I only really could make one cut – larger potatoes could take up to four or five cuts:

Lay out your pieces, cut side up, on a tray so that they can dry out before you plant them the next day:

Here’s all my potatoes cut up.  It didn’t take very long:

Next you have to prepare the beds.  My mom has got a great way to plant seed potatoes in the garden and I’ve been doing it the same way she showed me a few years ago.  First you need to mark the trench (1) where you want to put your potatoes.  Then dig a trench (2) about 3″ wide and 6″ deep.  Space your potatoes (3) depending on the final size of your potatoes – mine are all smaller so I spaced roughly every 4″ – 6″.  Back fill the soil (4) so that it covers the tops of the potatoes.  As the potatoes grow, keep back filling until you’ve reached the same height as the rest of the garden.  This way you don’t need to hill the soil.

I had my first and only weekend as a vendor at the opening of the Kemptville Farmer’s Market on Sunday, May 31st (I know, this post is long overdue) and it was kind of a crap day.  The forecast was for rain, however, no one thought it would hail:

That makes it three times now that my tomato plants have been hailed on!  Ridiculous!  Everyone else’s stuff got full of hail too:

Many vendors and customers took sanctuary under tents and umbrellas:

There was a space between two tents tied close together and underneath was a little hail pile:

Yikes!  It was a cold, wet, hail-ey, no-good day.  I did manage to sell some tomato plants – they were priced to go.

The Kemptville Farmer’s Market runs on Sunday from 2 – 4 PM.  I hope the weather gets better for them.

I was in Seattle last weekend for the Northwest Folklife festival and managed to get my garden on.  First stop was City People’s Garden store:

This place was huge and completely gorgeous!  If I lived in Seattle, I definitely would go to this garden centre.  Of course, I had to check out the seed selection and promptly made my way over to here:

Ed Hume, Renee’s Garden, Territorial Seed Company and Abundant Life Seeds were on the significantly-depleted racks.  I picked up some White Russian kale, Marian rutabaga, Early Jalapeno hot pepper, Black Cherry tomato (can’t have too much of this), Gala Mâche and a Sensitive Plant seeds.

Like I said, everything was gorgeous:

They even had a Northwest Natives section:

This is just a small selection of the variety of tomatoes for sale, many of them heirlooms:

Well tended and well watered – a gardener’s dream!  We also went to Magnolia Garden Center where I bought some Flashy Trout’s Back romaine lettuce (completely for the name!) and some bio-degradable bamboo pots for me and my mom.

Touring around the city we saw lots of interesting things:

Anyone know what this tree/shrub is called?  We saw lots of them in full bloom:

Gorgeous!

At Northwest Folklife I stopped by the Seattle Urban Farm Company to check out their display:

You can see a humongous bay leaf plant in that 5-gallon blue bucket.  They also had some raised beds and chickens:

Seattle was very nice – sunny days and cool evenings.  The rhododendrons were in full bloom in a wide variety of colours, shapes and sizes.

All you Seattle-based gardeners are pretty lucky!

The Kemptville Farmer’s Market website is up.  Hooray!  Again the kick-off for the Farmer’s Market is this Sunday from 11 AM  to 4 PM in conjunction with the 2-day event of the Dandelion Festival and Veg Stock.  As part of this weekend’s festivities, my sister and I (as Nukariik) will be performing at Veg Stock on Saturday at 6 PM.  Hope to see you there!

P.S.  Here’s a line up for this weekend’s performers:

Saturday:
12pm – Kansas City Shuffle
1pm – George Buys
2pm – Andy McGaw
3pm – Meredith Luce and the Mandates
4pm – THE OH YEAH’S
5pm – Loon Choir
6pm – NUKARIIK
630pm – Barn
730pm – Al Wood and the Woodsmen
830pm – Roxilla

Sunday:
11am – Chef Bruce and the loose n’ juicy acoustic army
11:30 pm – Grenville Grass
12:30pm – Shady Blue
1:30pm – Pat Moore and the Vinyl Frontier
2:30pm – Trevor Alguire and Gilles Leclerc
3:30pm – John Carroll
4:30pm – The Standby Brothers

Just a quick note to tell you that I will be selling the last of my tomato seedlings at the Kemptville Farmer’s Market this Sunday, May 31st from 11 AM to 4 PM in the parking lot behind the Court House at Water and Prescott Street.  Come on out and enjoy the tunes at Veg Stock starting at 12 noon on  Saturday and 11 AM on Sunday!