I'm primarily a perennials gardener. I never fall for the "color spot" annuals and don't specialize in roses or lilies or begonias, in spite of my horticultural heritage. I've also never gotten serious about vegetables.
To get good veggie results in Central Oregon you have to dedicate your spring to babying seeds and starts in a greenhouse, setting up walls'o'water, running out to protect crops from frost in August, and fighting off the birds and bugs. It's a very short season and doesn't seem worth it to me.
However, in the past I have produced some tomatoes, a pumpkin, two eggplants and bushels of parsley and mint, which appear to be my specialty. (I also try and fail every year to grow arugula - it's a mythic struggle.) But today I can raise my head proudly and declare myself a farmer: I have grown a potato.
I don't actually remember planting potatoes, but occasionally when one starts to sprout in the vegetable bin I take it out and stick it in the ground. While harvesting parsley this morning, I pulled up what I thought was a weed and found a small red potato at the other end.
I can't describe the awe and pride I felt when I held it up. Any suburbanite can grow tomatoes and zucchini, but to produce a potato seems like an authentic farmer-type accomplishment.
I think I'll steam it in a (tiny) pan and eat it with butter and salt and pepper.
Note to Kathi D.: no need to be flaunting your Cali harvest abbondanza - we're talking high desert here!
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