Here we grow

Here’s what the home farming experiment looks like, two months later. As many of the same plants will appear in more mature form, you may wish to refresh your memory on where things stood in late April.

First, in the matter of the potatoes: Last seen growing as five plants above ground, they were dug up a couple weeks ago, yielding approximately five pounds of potatoes. They might have yielded more if it hadn’t started getting so infernally hot so early this year. Still, I’m pretty pleased with this as a first attempt.

The site where the potatoes previously resided is now home to a proud stand of bell peppers.

The sweet potatoes, too, are now in the ground. The fact that this photo was taken through layers of chicken wire and bird netting might suggest that I am just a smidge overprotective of them, which is… accurate.

This is my second year growing sweet potatoes. Last year, I had four plants in the main sweet potato area. This year, I have 15. The vines will grow to cover this whole area and up to 30 pounds of sweet potatoes might grow underground. (But don’t count your chickens.)

Here’s a young sweet potato plant up close.

Here’s a new cucumber and cosmo area in a nook created by some old refrigerator doors. The seeds weren’t even in the ground yet two months ago and we may now be just a week or two away from some actual, edible cucumbers.

The cosmos think they’re just hanging out…

… but they are, in fact, there to help attract pollinators to the cucumbers. Without pollinators, the cucumbers won’t get much bigger than this little guy, who’s only an inch or so long at the moment.

Behind the refrigerator doors, you may have spotted this contraption. In a rare bout of efficiency, I found these 7-foot-long countertops marked “Free” out by the curb in front of a house, wrestled them into the back of a sedan, attached wood to the ends, and had a new 7 x 2 x 2 planter box within the day. It took longer to get the dirt to fill it. Whoever came up with the phrase “dirt cheap” was a liar. Dirt expensive.

Some neighbors have pools in their back yards. In ours, we have a farm.

Meanwhile, in the front yard, a new cucumber and cosmo area begins!

You are just in time for the emergence of the first cucumber seedling, which could look a lot like its back yard brothers by August.

There are also bell pepper plants in the front yard, part of the 13 total bell pepper plants growing in various places. And I don’t even use that many bell peppers. Guess what you’re getting for your next birthday? Bell peppers.

The main crop attraction of the front yard, though, is two 16-foot rows of tomato plants.

For just being stuck in whatever dirt was under the lawn, they’re looking pretty good.

In fact, most of them already have blossoms, which may become actual tomatoes. Or they could just stay blossoms, if that’s what they want. No pressure.

Thank you for visiting Chris Acres.

(Were you as disturbed as I was by the presence of weeds in several photos? To help our readers during these uncertain times, we are offering a no-contact option, whereby you can come to my house and weed the yards whenever you’d like as long as I don’t see you and you don’t talk to me. Call today if interested, as slots fill up quickly.)