Potato Fruit

For the past few years we have planted a second garden on some space loaned to us on a near-by farm. Today when the children and I went over to weed the potatoes, we were surprised to find small green "tomatoes" growing on one of the plants.

cross pollination?

At first I though that we might be dealing with cross pollination. After all, tomatoes and potatoes are closely related members of the nightshade family. However, when we began finding more fruit on other plants in the garden, I decided that these must be actual potato fruit. Sure enough, a quick search online led me to a site which explains all about these strange green fruit. If you ever find any growing on your own potato plants DON'T eat them. They are poisonous. Really, really cool, but also really poisonous.

potato fruit!

Update On My Tabletop Garden

The re-growing celery has made it's way outdoors.
I can't see much difference between the two plants,
 although they were started two weeks apart. {Only
one of these plants survived and it did not produce
 more celery. It just went to seed. So, 
Re-Growing Celery apparently doesn't work.}

The sweet potatoes slips are coming along slowly.

My experiment with re-growing green onions
in water is yielding not so great results.  The greens
come back limp, and see how the bulb is shrinking?
I may try planting these in dirt and see if that makes it worth it.
{Dirt didn't go well either. Another re-growing fail}

Here is my ginger "plant." It isn't growing like it expected
(sprouts out the top). Instead, the nubs are growing out
and turing green. Very interesting. Very slow too.
{I kept this potted up as a houseplant. It looks and smells nice.}



 Want to try growing your own indoor garden? Amanda of Hearts and Trees has created a Tabletop Garden Notebook Page that you can use to record you observations.

Garden Starting Update

Our indoor "garden" is coming along nicely. The sweet potato has some good root growth, though no sprouts have appeared yet. We've also added an avacado pit, but it hasn't shown any signs of life yet. I was afraid our celery experiment was going to turn out to be a failure. Our first snowstorm of the season (in February??) hit the night we put the celery in the water to soak and there was no way to get any dirt from the garden to plant it. So, we kept it in the bowl of water and waited for the weather to warm up. It started wilting and turning brown, and I was thinking we would have to throw it out. But then . . . leaves started peaking out of the center and after about a week, we finally had growth!

This morning I noticed that the new growth had a little bit of brown on the edges, so I sent my son to the garden to get some dirt. While he was digging, he found a flint arrow head! It's funny how you can mix history into a botany lesson.



Indian arrow head

Here is our celery plant in its new home, waiting for the time when it can be transplanted to its summer garden home.

Re-grown celery in a fancy Modge-Podged pot

Getting Ready For Spring Planting

I've recently joined the Pinterest fad and while I was poking around over there, I found a couple of neat things to try out in the garden this year. I decided last fall that I wanted to grow sweet potatoes, so I was thrilled to find a link to an article explaining how to start your own sweet potato slips. It seemed like a good project for an 11 year old boy. 



starting sweet potato slips

 Then I came across another pin to an article telling how to re-grow celery from the end of a store-bought stalk. My grandpa grew up on a celery farm, and I grew listening to his stories. I've tried (and failed) growing celery from seed, so I'm excited to see if this will work. {Edited to say: despite what is claimed by the author of the post I linked to, re-growing celery does NOT produce more celery. However, if you want celery seed, you may decide to try it anyway.}

a garden on our window sill



My favorite part about homeschooling is teaching my children that education doesn't have to stop once you graduate. You can continue to learn new things all your life. Really cool things like how to start a garden on your window sill. I'll try to post an update in a week or two showing how our plants are growing.