This afternoon, after the schoolwork, everybody scattered to do different activities. I meandered out to the garden to dig the rest of the sweet potatoes. The remaining two hills had a depressing lack of large tubers. I found one medium-sized one, which I managed to cut with the shovel while digging it, and a handful of small ones. I stand by my theory that planting them in loamy, sandy holes at the edge of the asparagus bed was a good idea, but the year was too dry and they were a little outside the range of the sprinkler. I'll try again next year. I put so much sand in there (to make the soil less compact)

I also dug a few unimpressive carrots. One of them has a little purple blotch on it. "Purple carrots" my behind! I cut one of the mystery squash/gourds (ok, @woodelf68, 'squourds') just to check it. It seems too light; I doubt that it has edible innards. One beet, along with its greens. Um, leaves? It seems odd to call them 'greens' when they're. actually the dark color I wanted the dratted carrots to be. Also a couple of shell beans, just to check them.

I have the dehydrator filled with apple slices and humming away.

I have to squelch my urge to peek inside. They won't be done 'til evening! Late! Leave 'em alone!

Dried apple ¡dried apple dried apple!! So delicious. Took 8 hours, and I should be able to get a second round drying before bed tonight.

The dehydrator is pretty old; someone from church had it for ages and didn't use it, so she gave it to me. Thank heavens for handmedowns.

Carrot

Ok, it seems like that canning project took way too long to have yielded only ten jars. Out carrots this year are as long as normal but only half as wide, so there is a LOT less carrot per carrot. I spent quite a while cleaning and chopping them this morning. The jars I got are glowing a lovely golden-orange on the kitchen counter, but. Damn. Ten is not very many. Based on the size of the bed we planted, I should have gotten 4 times as much.

Insufficient carrots (and one beet) in an exceptionally sturdy basket.

Pretty, nutritious, and shelf-stable. The ones that look a bit darker are in the rose-pink jars I was given for Mother's Day. Thanks, @velcropoodle !

   I checked the two week forecast and it looks (fingers crossed) as if we’re not due for any more frost. Ergo I am going to plant some flower seeds outside this week, and I just planted the carrots with the ‘seed tape’ that I bought last month. It had about 22 linear feet of tissuepaper ‘tape’ inside with the seeds attached to it. I will reblog this when (if!?) I see germination and again when I harvest, to let you know how it performed.

[ID: image of a seed packet for rainbow carrots, Burpee kaleidoscope blend]

May 3, 2022

   Ok! two months in from planting the seed tape. I had to do a slight thinning because there were a dozen or so carrots that were too close, but it was much better than what I get when I just direct sow carrot seed, so that’s a plus. Overall germination was good, with no bare spots in the planting.

These are the ones I thinned out. The purple ones show color up into the stem, so I was able to favor those and not thin any of them out, except for one sample. Other than that, though, this is random chance. I got 4 white, 5 orange (although some of the orange are pinker than others), and one yellow. No red, unless that one pink/orange one would deepen to red at maturity. Having nearly half my sample regular orange is dis-spiriting, compared to the picture on the seed package. I will probably be able to harvest by the end of the month, so I’ll give you full results then.