Potato Harvest

Well I must say I am disappointed at the harvest numbers this first year. But I think I know why, it took us until about late July to truly figure out our watering system. The potatoes grew a ton at the top and a ton at the bottom but not anything in the middle. So all in all we got roughly 60 pounds of German Butter ball and 35 pounds of the fingerling Rose Finn Apple. We may do something a little different next year using tires instead of all this dirt. It really is a lot of earthmoving just to uncover some spuds.

But we did have some major help, this is why Curious the chicken has her name.

Dual Flush Toilet Retrofit

In our efforts to save water we decided to install a dual flush toilet. But we didn't want to replace our newer toilet because that seemed the the farthest thing from environmental! So after some research we found a dual flush toilet retrofit kit! Say that 5 times fast!

Heres the facts: our toilets are "low flow" meaning they only use 1.6 gallons per flush.
With the dual flush kit:
1.) rinse mode or #1 flush - .8 - 1 gallons per flush
2.) full flush or #2 flush - 1.3- 1.6 gallons per flush

Now I am all for the "if it's yellow let mellow" but after a few of those a rinse flush needs to happen. We did have some quirks with the install and getting it just right. But now that we've figured it out and the dual flush works really well!

We got the kit from Dual Flush Kit. It's reasonably priced at $30, compared with some retrofit kits I've seen. However this one has the advantage of being entirely made in the USA, Michigan in fact which they proudly display all over the box. We have 3 toilets in this house, but we only bought 2 to test out. I should have just gotten that third one but oh well, this spring we'll make that 3rd one happen. Jacob my handy man was only able to install one before his shoulder surgery so the second toilet will get done some time in January.

I also haven't started the cloth TP campaign yet. We ended up with too many late fall chores I needed help with before Jacob's surgery so that got pushed to the wayside for a while. But I intend to move to cloth, at least for #1 I'll keep you posted!

Hoverflies

All summer long I've been seeing these "fly bee's" and didn't have any idea what they were. They react like flies when you get close to a plant, by jumping off and moving. Where as bee's don't give a hoot about you and continue on doing whatever they are doing. Also the markings on these fly bee's are similar to an Italian honey bee but they have giant eyes like a fly. I was most confused because I have never noticed them before.

My mother did some sleuthing and found a wonderful website about these guys. They are called hover flies and that is the perfect name for them! Garden Safari has great information and pictures about hover flies. The pictures are even better than Jacob got with our little camera.

They seem like excellent little pollinators hopping from flower to flower. All of the pictures can be clicked on for a bigger image.

Potatos

This is only the surface stuff what I could reach with my fingers under the ground. YIKES!