Poppies and Potatoes

Although I'll never admit it, the chickens helped me to discover that some spring potatoes were ready for harvest.

We've been having issues keeping the chickens trapped in their field, due to the holes that keep appearing in the plastic fencing material we used. Heidi broke down and bought some real, metal chicken wire, so once we set that up, the problem will be solved.

In the meantime, however, they are asserting their status as adjunct gardeners and providing weed and pest control in our various garden beds.

Though their work, while vigorous, is typically spotty and overly destructive, in this case it proved useful, as they uncovered a potato that was clearly large enough to harvest.

Therefore I harvested some and fried them up yesterday for a delicious breakfast. And with all the potatoes we have planted, we'll probably have all we can eat for the next two months at least.

Now on to the discussion of Poppies.

Heidi obtained some poppy seeds three years ago from a long-time grange member Lily Meek. Mrs. Meek has spent years cultivating poppies in an attempt to create a uniquely beautiful variety. Though I'm not sure which traits she was most interested in, here are some examples of what we have this year. I'm flagging them with their variety so that we can isolate the seeds from a given variety if we want to next year.

We have 6 general varieties this year.

We have pink and red, and in each color we have "Simple", "Complex" and "Dense" petal structure.

Pink, simple

Red Simple

Pink Complex

Red Complex

Pink Dense (not fully opened)

Red Dense (not fully opened)

It will be interesting to see what we can get by isolating the seeds we get from each of these types.