Saturday in the Garden

I only had the afternoon to work in the garden, so I didn't accomplish much. There was also a pint of Guinness and two bowls of pipe tobacco involved in my lack of pastoral achievement. I know some people can smoke a pipe and work - my father speaks of his father, Jim, smoking a pipe all day day while framing a house. I can do neither. If I am smoking a pipe, that is basically my activity of the moment. I can think while I do it, sometimes talk and / or walk but the minute I add another facet, my pipe goes out. Then I have to stop and tamp and re-light. I guess it is not that I don't do other task while smoking, it just multiplies the time needed by about two to three hundred percent. Also, the mellow and contented feeling I get from smoking a pipe makes me two to three hundred percent more likely to sit down with a pint and admire the fruits of my labors, such as they are.
Of the not much accomplished -the great potato experiment of 2010 continues. I implemented my plan of planting potatoes in whiskey barrels to free up garden space and allow me to mound soil on my potato plants to get more production per plant. In one barrel I planted the left over seed potatoes I had. On Wednesday I cut the potatoes into sections with two to three "eyes" per section and then dusted the cut ends with ashes from my fireplace. Most sources say to dust your cut ends with sulfur powder, but my organic gardening book also recommends ashes. I don't have sulfur, but I'm over-run ashes. I am not so organic as lazy and cheap. By Saturday my cut potatoes looked a little withered by the cut edges. Is that bad, would sulfur have prevented that? So my withered, sooty cut potatoes went in one barrel. In the other barrel I planted some of the potatoes that had already been in the ground in my raised beds. I had originally put in about 9 potatoes in 5 square feet or so, and after some thought, decided that was way to much space to give over to potatoes. So I dug up 5 potatoes (leaving 2 square feet of potatoes planted) and moved them to the second barrel. I knew the planted potatoes were still in decent shape from previous snooping, but much to my surprise the ones I dug up had finally started to sprout and root. They looked really nice, healthy and well adjusted as I ripped them from their homes. So now I wonder if they will survive the transplant. I also wonder this - why can't I leave well enough alone? why am I constantly make grand garden experiments out of simple planting procedures? what is my fascination with meddling? Any insight or answers to these questions can be kept to yourself, dear reader.
I also put out some granular fertilizer (LadyBug brand 8-2-4 by our local garden center / garden show host / garden king - John Dromgoole) and sprayed some Medina Hast-a-Grow mixed with SuperThrive. Why most gardening organics have to have cheesy names is beyond me, but if SuperThrive ever makes a radio commercial, I recommend strongly they invest in the rights to "Superfreak" and then just make the obvious change in lyrics for their own use. I already sing it my head every time I use it. SuperThrive is a mix of vitamins, minerals and voodoo with a crazy label covered in marijuana induced, incoherent, left over hippy babbeling rivaled only by those Dr. Bronner's soap containers that are so creepy I don't even like them in the shower with me. SuperThrive's label is more 1950's optimism and less 1970's pseudo-religion, but that much lunacy in print gets you lumped into the same category with me.
Anyway about it, I fertilized. I think I needed to, but don't know because I still haven't done a soil test. But I did look as though I knew all about soil fertility and other deep subjects as I smoked my pipe.