A dry garden and more potatoes

The garden dried out enough over the weekend so that we able to put in some potatoes on Sunday (April 5). So, for the record, here's what we planted:

Row 3: French fingerings, Red Russets, Yukon Gold
Row 2: legacy potatoes (these are a mix of those left from last year)
Row 1: [unplanted], legacy, Red Pontiacs

The west part of row 1 still has some room, and if I can find some potatoes I like, I'll put some more in to fill out the row.

Here's what the Washington State University comprehensive description of potato varieties says about Red Pontiacs:

Tubers are "oblong to round; smooth, sometimes netted, red skin; medium deep eyes; white flesh.... High yielding variety of attractive appearance, widely adapted (especially to muck soils). Some drought resistance, bruises easily; susceptible to air cracking at harvest. Low total solids. Good storability, medium dormancy."

And more about this variety can be found at the Red Pontiac page of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

I am interested to see how the potatoes from last year (which I have named "legacy" potatoes) do. They are relatively small and shriveled, but they came from stock that produced well last year, so I have some hope for them. Most of them look like Russian bananas, but we'll see.

Because of the bad weather, we have been late getting these things into the ground, so it will be well into July before we can see how well they are doing. We harvested the potatoes last year a little too early (July 4), and I am determined to wait until at least the end of July before digging them up. Which is not to say I won't be sneaking a few new potatoes out of the garden toward the end of June.

In any event, it's good to have things in the ground.

Cold weather for the past couple of nights gave us a scare, more for the new bees than anything else. But it never got much below freezing, and it looks like today will be sunny with temps climbing to the 60s.

Are we done with winter yet?