Harvesting Potatoes & More Onions + Making Fresh Garden Salsa! 🥔🧅🍅 // Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going today we're going to be working on harvesting some stuff some potatoes not all of them but the ones that look the most ready some onions possibly some tomatoes and peppers and I'll just give you an update on how things are growing out here on the new property the weeds are growing great but so is everything else really look at those weeds oh my gosh there's just bind weed everywhere we'll come through with a tractor after we Harvest everything and not all the onions are even ready to harvest so I'm going to come through and just pick the ones that are ready which you can see right here good example of ones that can stay in the ground and size up a little bit more the next of those haven't begun to get soft yet but these here see how the neck is soft and it's flopped over this one's ready to come out I will also pick anything that has bolted which I only see two right there you don't want that to happen the storage life goes down in your onion that sort of thing so we'll pop those out boy these are looking good though look at this that right there is a Walla Walla that's huge and then we have mostly a few candy onions up here that we did not pick the first time because they were not quite ready but they are now Erin is out mowing look at the marigolds they are beautiful and the cosmos that we've direct seeded using that cedar they are looking great really pretty look at this one look at that fluffy thing that does not even look like a cosmo right there I did have one little Gap in seeds right here which you know was nice because we were able to walk back and forth but our sweet potatoes are really going for it too let me pop over here so I'm not shading them look at that all of those Vines those are all sweet potato vines so hopefully we've got a good crop of those we won't Harvest those for a little bit and this is where our potatoes start and they go down a ways and you can see like these are here are Huckleberry golds which are a wonderful potato they have purple skin but a yellow interior and you can see that the plants have started well they're Browning and dying back that's an indicator that they are ready to come out now you can see that there are still some green shoots and you know you could leave them a little while longer if you wanted to you could wait till the whole plant dies back and is gone and then Harvest so that all the tubers size up but the way I want to approach this this year is not taking everything out all in one Fell Swoop I just want to take things out as they are ready and I feel like that will be a little less overwhelming because potatoes are heavy it's a lot of work to dig them and move them around so if we do them in smaller increments instead of trying to do all the Harvest all at one time I mean it's kind of impressive when you get everything dug up and you've got you know a thousand pounds of potatoes or whatever the case may be but that's not the way I want to do it this year we're just going to take things as they come a lot of the green you're seeing is bindweed too so they might look fresh but that's actually weeds so Huckleberry Golds will find all the rest of the tags as we under them but I kind of want to take let's see trying to fight the sunflowers here as I go we'll probably leave some maybe we might go all the way to here which these are the German butter balls these are the the ones that took the longest to come up so we might leave those because those still look pretty darn good and I want those tubers to size up I have come along and we have harvested some here and there so we've wanted to eat them and then as we get closer to the peppers we've got red lasatas and russets russets I might leave breadless sodas I might take so they end right here where the pepper started I did bring my gloves out because you know I found 10 black widows in the peppers the other day last week when we were harvesting I've been back out here though several times I might have scared them off because I can't find any now I went back to every plant that I could remember a spider was on and I don't see them so we're going to be careful as we go about things today and then our tomato patch is just wild wild with growth there are a ton of tomatoes in here just a ton of them and there are so many plants right in here we have the Rosella hibiscus we've got some more sweet potatoes we've got artichokes here oh my goodness look at this there's just so many so much produce we've been picking corn and then our Vine crops which every plant has something it's producing but I'm not going to go through every single one of these probably I think these are our carving pumpkins right here oh yeah oh we're doing great in here look at that that looks beautiful and I can see more of them sprinkled around in here it's probably kind of hard to see with all the leaves so I saw some white ones in here oh yeah oh fun oh look at those where are the butternuts I can't remember oh right in here they're forming up look at that do you guys remember last year I planted two individual butternut squash plants like it was one little stock each and we got 62 butternut squash from those two Vines I don't know if this year's Harvest is gonna be like that but oh that was awesome I was hoping the vine crops would be a weed suppressor on this side not so much in fact we have two rows this side closest to me struggled and the vines were not as big they are starting to they have rebounded and are starting to put on a lot of growth but it took them a while so I am noticing that the weed population is far fewer in this section as opposed to this line right out here so that's good we've got beautiful speckle speckled Hound right there there's a flat stacker and we are going to have so many of the little ones little orange ones anyway I could poke through these Vines all day it's so fun to see because you can't you can't see unless you start spreading the leaves apart so it's always a little bit of a surprise kind of like harvesting potatoes this is always a little bit of a fun process to me because it's like you're digging for treasure you never know how many potatoes you're gonna find underneath each of your plants and some do better than others so far what we have dug just to eat fresh I've been pretty impressed with so I'm excited I'm excited for today I've got some crates and a digging fork and my gloves this is all we're gonna need so let's get it done this is the first plant you guys oh my goodness so you'll notice from each plant you'll get kind of a range of sizes you'll get some nice big tubers all the way down to some real little itty bitty ones so after we get done with the drying process what I'd like to do is separate these to where we've got a lot of the bigger ones for our storage and then we eat the little ones right away because they don't store quite as long but that is amazing and there are so many worms in this soil out here I love it all right one down like hundreds to go [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] guys we got three varieties out of the ground today Huckleberry gold Kennebec and purple Viking we're going to move on to onions next but I'm really happy with this look at how beautiful so two of the crates are the Huckleberry Golds and the hot Golds and German butter balls which I did not Harvest today there toward the end those are two of my favorite in terms of storage and flavor they're really creamy and delicious you know they're pretty consistent size some of them come out real big again some come out small and we will take these out when we get ready to clean which I'll go over the cleaning process here in a minute when we take them to the barn they kind of back here my word some of them are just massive but these are just kind of like an all-purpose white potato you can use them for boiling mashing baking whatever you know these are just a good one I did Pierce this one I forgot to put it this is my pierced potato crate right here so these will probably eat in the next day or two out of all the potatoes we harvested that's pretty good that's only five potatoes and then this crate right here are purple Vikings and these are the ones I had the fewest of to plant I used my own seed you guys for a lot of these this year I just had leftovers from last year that we popped in the ground so that's where these came from but purple Vikings whoa uh purple skin white interior on those and they're a good all-purpose one as well I did clear the ground just a little bit as I was going and you can see I just piled everything here I think we'll put the brush hog on the tractor and which is like a mower and we'll bring it through here and just chop all this stuff up and it'll kind of spread out so this is what we've got left we've got the red Pontiacs here we've got German butter ball let's see red Pontiacs yep they start here go to here and then German butter balls is that the whole rest I thought I had some russets in here oh we got red lasatas right here and then russet burbanks right there Monica and I harvested some of those German butter balls the other day and made fries like uh we made french fries and they were so good oh my gosh okay let's go get onions next [Music] foreign okay so this is what I got from the candy onion section I'm not exactly sure what this one is it kind of kind of looks like one of our Ed's Red shallots that got massive so it might be that since I started all of these from seed it's likely I might have dropped a seed or two in the wrong container anyway so these all came from the candy onion section and there's some like good sized onions in here my word and then we've got a couple from the Walla Walla section right here I got just a handful from the yellow sweet Spanish section and then these are the Newberg onions so I still even have a few candy onions left I mean you could pull them it's probably a matter of days before those stems start to flop but since I'm taking a more relaxed approach to harvest this year which has been so nice I'm just gonna wait till they're ready so Walla walla's here oh you know what take that one too that one's got a squishy neck those will be probably the last that I'll Harvest and then we've got the yellow sweet Spanish right here and the Newberg here and a nice crop of bindweed look at that I was planning on getting some tomatoes and we may come back out here to grab some but I want to take all of these things to the barn area because I do need to clean the onions that we harvested last week no it was a week before last they've been sitting back there drawing so we'll clean those up so that we can lay our new onions out so they can start their drying process and then we also need to lay our potatoes out so they can dry as well all right guys so we're back behind the barn this is where we laid the onions out to dry onions and shallots a week before last these shallots are just huge my goodness but you can see they've all dried down beautifully we even had rain and I forgot to cover them but the goal is just to make sure they're dried out so what we're going to do today so that we can utilize this table for our new crop onions is we're going to cut the tops off of these and The Roots if there's extra soil cleaning to the onions you can brush that off softly if you want you don't have to if it's dried out all the way you can just leave them just as is you want to leave as much of the papery skin on them as possible because that will help with storage life the whole goal is just to make sure to remove anything that's got any excess moisture because you don't want to introduce that into your storage area so we need to get this done in order to do our next step so here we go thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you all right guys got it all done all the onions and shallots that were here I cleaned those they are in The Root Cellar I will show you that in a second the new onions that we picked today are sitting here and the tomatoes are laid out I laid these out in alphabetical order so I can hopefully remember without having to go get a label and I found some kindling back here that I divided them with so we've got candy onions that we picked today these are newbergs we've got yellow sweet no Walla Wallace I can remember my ABCs and yellow sweet Spanish Utah right here some of these are absolutely massive which is awesome they store really well but when I go to cook something I usually look for onions about this size kind of like that Medium middle of the road I still feel like that's pretty good size pretty big but look at this my goodness gracious and then right in here in the barn I've got the potatoes laying out so we've got the Huckleberry gold sitting here Kennebec and purple Viking the reason we lay out potatoes and onions is for them to just dry down a little bit uh potatoes I don't usually leave out quite as long the only reason we're doing this is to let any soil that's still clinging to the tuber dry up so it's easy to brush off also it helps the skin dry so here's what I'm talking about if we come in here and we use just our thumb strength see that see how the skin just rubs off right there that's usually what they refer to as a new potato where they just aren't cured they're not a little bit older so the skin it hasn't developed that kind of toughness that dryness so by laying them out here in the barn where it's shaded it's a little bit cooler and in a single Row for the most part I mean for the most part I probably need to go through and it doesn't really matter that much point is to keep the moisture off of them so that they can just dry and develop that thicker skin so it's a little bit different than the onions and that the onions are actually soaking in a little bit more energy from those leaves than the roots and then also drying down I usually leave those out a little bit longer than I leave out the potatoes these I'll leave out for I mean just days if maybe a week at the most currently at 45 degrees Fahrenheit and looks like 73 humidity oh it's glorious in here it feels so good right up here you can see our shallots adds red and zabroon so different in how they're shaped but beautiful and we store everything in breathable baskets like this except for the potatoes we do put them in the baskets but inside burlap bags so that they stay divided by variety but they aren't allowed to be exposed to light and then our onions here we've got the candies in this section here and we still have more to bring in you know out back and in the garden still so we'll be filling up this basket press plus probably needing a little bit more again these baskets are breathable and we just cut a little board to put on top of the basket so we could stack them so anyway the crates are great for storage that's what our fall bulbs come in most of the time so we have a lot of those hanging out and we use those quite a lot uh you can see I picked some peppers that's from last week's Harvest Right There we've been using off of them and then those right there are onions from last year can you believe that like yes they have sprouted which means the middle part you have to discard but everything around it is still super firm and some of them are still like as firm as can be it's amazing and then this handy little sheet I keep tape to the wall because it lists our most common crops that we're going to be storing in here and since we're sharing this room with everything that I store I have to find a happy medium but right here you can see that for garlic and onions the degrees and percent of humidity and potatoes right here so based on these two crops it looks like I could kick the temperature up five degrees to 50 and then try to get our humidity down just a few percent so we're within the right range oh my gosh I want to spend all my days in that Root Cellar it's actually a little over 100 today 105 tomorrow 107 the next day and then back down to 105 and then it looks like after that we might be going down a little bit again we'll see but the last thing I want to do is grab one of our baskets over here I was going to do a tomato Harvest but we're kind of getting later in the day I want to just pick some ingredients to make some pico de gallo we're having tacos for dinner tonight so we need to get some peppers well I can get some peppers in The Root Cellar some Tomatoes an onion from The Root Cellar and I already have cilantro inside these right here you guys these are the uh sugar kick is it something pops it's a proven winners pepper sweet pepper that came out I think this year or last year these are so good you should grow these if you get a hold of those plants they are so amazing I actually made a stir fry last night it was chicken just kind of throw it together it had onions and garlic from our garden as well as jalofuego hot peppers which is what I'm going to use for the pico de gallo I also had broccoli from our spring crop I went picked some carrots and cut those up kind of small and what else did it happen and then those sweet peppers that I just showed you it was so good oh you know what let's go get a lime out of the greenhouse you absolutely cannot beat the taste of citrus straight off the tree oh my goodness and they really like our Greenhouse over there okay let's get some tomatoes I'm just gonna do a mix of variety we've got some real good Aromas over here foreign [Music] foreign and there you have it it looks and tastes pretty good I think it's really good everything from the garden um so cilantro Roma tomatoes candy onion the challah Fuego pepper which I didn't put a full two peppers in there I probably put a little over one which I think is good because well the kids are going to eat this so I didn't really want to make it super spicy get them started young yeah and then some salt I think that's it pretty simple so good and fresh it would be good with avocados too well it would be but do you grow avocados here I don't think so maybe in the greenhouse if you want to order me an avocado tree from somewhere I'll try no way we do like to dice up or chop up avocado and put it in our salsa it's kind of like you're getting guacamole and salsa at the same time but it does make your salsa a little like milky looking and I don't mind it no I don't either plus you only want to make up as much as you can eat at that time right refrigerated salsa is nasty and you guys that is going to do it for today super happy to have the bit that we got harvested done and we'll just keep chipping away at it as things are ready to go and it's just such a much more manageable happier way of doing things for me usually it's such a push and I want to get everything done all in one day and I'm kind of relaxing a little bit on that and just enjoying the process a little bit more especially when it's so hot out you guys I don't want to be harvesting potatoes and onions in the full sun when it's 100 plus degrees outside I don't think most people would want to be doing that I could make myself sick on this I think Could you um that's good that's a happy happy not I mean don't get sick but it's good I'm glad you like it anyway thank you guys so much for watching I hope you enjoyed it and we will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 210,677

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: -JUpECDOlb0

Length: 25min 20sec (1520 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023