6/5/15 Potatoes/General

I was out browsing in the yard and saw all kinds of jumping frogs. Here is one as little as my small finger tip.

Bless his little heart. He is protecting my strawberry bucket plants from bugs.

I reached down into the soil beneath a potato plant and got these beauts.

You can see that the potato plants are large and already have blossoms.

My potato patch used to have a dead stump in it. This is how I removed the stump.

In my "Hay Bale Gardening" book I wrote, "Hide the stump by making a hay bale raised bed on the stump and filling it with dirt.  I then grow flowers or vegetables over the stump.  Let me repeat, all you need to do after encircling the stump with bales is to fill it up with dirt.  Let the bacteria in the soil deal with the stump while you enjoy the beauty of a flower garden."

Biochar Can

Eventually, I'm getting away from using steel for a biochar can. I'm going stainless (rust proof). If you stack two soup pots on top of each other, you can make a lot of biochar and never have them rust out.

I'm thinking about also heat treating some top soil. But there is more to it than just heat. You must do it at the right temperature. I'll need to read this link and study it: 

http://www.mjguide.com/tutorials/SoilandSoiless/1715.htm

I have a new flower that I grew from seed in my flower bed. The seeds cost 20 cents at Walmart. It is called Cosmos flower. It is one I grew in a trench filled with leaves. It took forever to fill the trench with oak leaves but now I see it was worth it.