A Potato Farmer I Am Not

We were supposed to have a cold front cross over us last night and send some more showers our way, but it seems to be taking its sweet time.  I took advantage of the reprieve to do the chicken chores - they got a banana for a treat - and I also wanted to dump the Yukon Gold potatoes that I had planted in the laundry tubs.

Both tubs had lots of vines growing in them earlier in the summer but were now dying back.  In the first tub, this is how many potatoes I found:

Boy was I disappointed.  But I still had one tub to go and all bets were on it.  So I dumped it over and here's what I found:

What you see if what you get folks:  just 1 good-sized potato and 3 smaller ones.  *sigh*

I'm thinking it's the combination of the oppressive heat this summer and I think I should have put more dirt in there.  Contrary to what I had read, all the potatoes were in the dirt and there were none in the straw.  Oh well, I still have the potato boxes to dig through, so maybe I've actually got some potatoes in there.  We'll try Yukon Gold again next year.

When I moved the tubs to dump them, I discovered that I'm growing a bumper crop of grubs and something very disturbing.

Look closely in the yellow circles and you'll see what I mean.  Termites!  Not surprising, I guess, since this is where an old tree was cut down.  But, in the interest of being a good neighbor, this just won't do.  I'll be buying some termite stakes later today.  Ugh...nasty things.

In the rest of the garden, which I am pretty much ignoring at this point, the once-written-off tomatoes have set some more fruit and I have some cucumbers!  How they got this big without me seeing them is beyond me.

Well, I'm on vacation today but it's not much of a vacation:   it's time to go work on the house some more and maybe sneak in a little more "me" time since it's my birthday tomorrow.  I'll be 26.  And, if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell also.

This post is part of this week's Farm Fresh Friday and Farmgirl Friday blog hops.