Rain, Rain

So, I have cut our seed potatoes Saturday so they can "cure" before they are planted. We were hoping to have them planted Tuesday, but alas, they still sit "curing" on my counter. It thunderstormed Monday night and rained on and off on Tuesday. There was even a chance of tornadoes. Today, it has been raining on and off again. Pretty soon it's going to be May and we're going to have a very late crop of potatoes. If my prepared potatoes are still good, that is. We still have a large quantity of seed potatoes, so we have an ample supply to try again. I don't know if they keep from year to year or not. I guessing not.

My husband and I aren't completely new to gardening, it's just been so long since either of us remembered planting some of the stuff we've decided to try this year. We've also decided to try the hanging tomato plants in hopes that the rabbits won't eat them off the vine. Of course gardening for us is always and exercise in patience, and somewhat futility, since there are so many rabbits in town. We're thinking about live trapping them and taking to them to the wildlife care center. We may even get some stray cats that we'll take to the shelter.

For now, we just wait for the rain to stop long enough to work in the garden again. I have some wild hollyhocks that need transplanting since they are in with our strawberries. But our strawberries looked to have survived another winter and our rhubarb has started to come up. Maybe this will be the year I can make strawberry-rhubarb preserves!

Planting

So it's Easter weekend, and we plan on planting potatoes and onion seed today. First, we have to re-till the garden and put up a fence to keep those pesky rabbits out of it. I don't know why, but there is a huge rabbit problem in this town. I haven't been able to keep green beans or carrots since we moved to this house. And it doesn't seem to matter how much blood meal we put out, they keep coming. And they will eat tomatoes, if that's what's left. We have about a month before we should plant anything else in our vegetable garden. I do have some bare spots around some fences that need some plants. Hopefully the begonia's I picked up will survive. I have a nice shady spot picked our for them.

I'm also hoping to plant herbs in the next couple of weeks. We're expected to have mostly sunshine next week, so that will be really helpful in planting.

Sweet Potato Fries

Our local restaurant started serving sweet potato fries. They are absolutely awesome! So awesome, I decided to try them at home. I took two sweet potatoes and cooked them together, but differently. I started cutting the one sweet potato and had some trouble cutting it. I used mt microwavable potato baker pouch to bake the second one for a minute. The second one was much easier to cut. I put the slices in a plastic zipper bog with some olive oil, salt, pepper and some ranch popcorn seasoning. I mixed it up and put them in a greased 8 inch square baking pan. Cooked them for 30ish minutes at 375 degrees F. I think they were pretty good, not quite as good as the restaurant (those are fried), but good enough to eat the sweet potatoes we have! The only problem I have with the restaurant fries, other than having to go to the restaurant, is that the serving they give you is too much. Have you ever eaten something and had so much that you just get full of that food? That's how many they give you. They are definitely made to share! Definitely try making some for yourself and enjoy!