📌 Quick Diary Summary: Early Summer Harvests
- 🥔 Potato Yields: Don’t expect massive yields from early “new” potatoes. Getting about 1 lb (500g) per plant in early July is perfectly normal. You are harvesting them for their tender, sweet flavor, not for winter storage!
- 🐌 The Slug Battle: Early cabbage is a magnet for slugs. To protect later cabbage varieties, try dusting the plants with a 50/50 mix of wood ash and tobacco dust—it naturally burns the slugs’ bellies and deters caterpillars.
- 🌧️ The Dry Mound Illusion: When you hill your potatoes (pile dirt around the stems), those mounds act like a thatched roof. Even after a heavy summer downpour, the soil inside the mound where the tubers are growing might be bone dry!
Luda, I pulled up one of the potato bushes yesterday (the ones I started early indoors as transplants). Oh my, it was so incredibly delicious, thank you for teaching me that method! But honestly, the yield seemed a bit small… I only got about 1 lb (500g) from the bush. Is that normal?
Also, I harvested all 6 heads of my early cabbage today and made a recipe for 4 jars of sauerkraut to test it out. I had to cut them because it felt like every slug in the neighborhood was living inside them! For my late-season cabbage, I heavily dusted them with a mix of wood ash and tobacco dust—let the slugs and caterpillars choke on that!
As for my tomatoes this year: I am absolutely loving Chernigov Bull’s Heart (Chernigovskoye Bychye Serdtse). It’s completely loaded with fruit. It’s a new variety for me this year. Izobilnye (Abundant) is also new and doing great. I’ll definitely be planting Pink Guy (Rozovyi Gay) again too. And of course, my old favorites are doing well: Malachite Box, Italian Hearts, and Apple Lipetsky is looking great this year too.
Russi wrote:
I only got about 1 lb (500g) from the bush. Is that normal?
Anya, 1 lb (500g) per bush for early potatoes is totally normal! Sure, it feels a bit small for us gardeners who are used to huge fall harvests, but the taste makes up for it. Store-bought early potatoes taste like cardboard compared to these.
Russi wrote:
I pulled up one of the potato bushes yesterday…
I also pulled up a couple of early potato plants for dinner tonight! Mine were a bit smaller, but so tasty.
Also, Luda, I noticed my broccoli finally formed one little head! So things aren’t too bad after all!
I dug up early potatoes for the second time today. They grew noticeably larger in just 6 days! But here is what I noticed: when I dug down a full spade deep, the soil inside the mound was bone dry. We just had a heavy downpour, but it didn’t penetrate the soil or soak the roots at all.
Everything is slowly ripening!
Marat wrote:
the soil inside the mound was bone dry. We just had a heavy downpour, but it didn’t penetrate…
It is so satisfying and delicious when everything comes from your own garden!
As for the rain, we only had one downpour here, but it was a good one. It soaked the ground, but my potato furrows are exactly the same as yours. Deep down between the rows, it is moist, but the actual hilled mounds where the potatoes sit are bone dry. I checked on how my main-crop (late) potatoes are forming, and so far, there are practically no tubers yet.
👨🔬 Editor’s Botanical Note: The “Umbrella Effect” on Hilled Potatoes
Marat and Ludmila both noticed a very common, yet frustrating, gardening phenomenon: even after a heavy rain, the soil inside a hilled potato mound remains completely dry. Why does this happen?
1. The Foliage Umbrella: By mid-summer, healthy potato plants have massive, dense canopies of leaves. When it rains, these leaves act like an umbrella, catching the water and channeling it down the outside edges of the plant, completely bypassing the center stem.
2. The Mound Run-off: Because potatoes are “hilled” (dirt is piled up around the base in a pyramid shape), gravity pulls the water down the slopes and into the trenches between the rows. The water soaks the deep soil in the trenches, but the raised mound sheds water like a pitched roof.
The Fix: If you are experiencing a dry summer, rely on drip irrigation placed directly on top of the mounds, or water the base of the plants slowly with a hose so the water has time to soak into the hill rather than running down the sides.
