This year I harvested potatoes for the first time, about 5kg in total. Not much, but also not bad for the effort: digging them down and digging them up, maybe 3 hours in total? Didn't weed or water at all. In fact, I was sure the experiment had failed when all the plants died at the end of July. Somebody said they're supposed to do that, I had a lightbulb moment, and yep -- they were there. Dug up the last ones today (~1.5kg) and my wife made a super tasty meal 🥰

@vegard that doesn't look like avocados, sir

@vegard When I was a vegetable farmer, I learned to plant potatoes in a trench and cover them with aged horse manure before putting dirt on top. Not only does this fertilize them, but makes it very easy to pull out the plants at the end of the season without fear of hitting the potatoes with a shovel or spading fork.

@vbabka from the day before: I found "tropical" avocados at the supermarket for the first time in my life and bought two. These are massive; they are of the West Indian race and sometimes called "Florida" avocados, whereas the usual supermarket Hass avocado are a Mexican/Guatemalan hybrid. People say the Florida avocados are watery and while I understand where it's coming from, these ones were nevertheless delicious with just a pinch of salt.

@vbabka I was also surprised to find Hass avocados from 5 different countries: Chile, Colombia, Peru, South Africa, and Israel. I suspect these are not _actually_ all Hass; the ones from Colombia were really small and the ones from Chile were too round and very red. My hope is always that some of these have been interplanted with (and pollinated by) some more cold-hardy variety and passed on some of these cold-hardiness genes. The pure Mexican varieties are without doubt the hardiest.

@vegard ALERT ALERT

NOT AVOCADOS

ALERT ALERT

@vbabka Coincidentally, we also had our first frost here a couple of days ago. This is cold damage on my trees -- the forecast said 4C overnight so I didn't put my planned cold protections in place but it actually touched 0C at the ground, even right next to the wall of our house.

I've updated my cold protections now, including a 120L barrel of water as thermal mass (with an aquarium heater as emergency backup).

My seedlings are almost all from this year; older trees are more resistant.

@vegard @vbabka AVOCADO BALANCE RESTORED, ALERT CANCELLED, REPEAT ALERT CANCELLED AVOCADO BALANCE RESTORED

@ljs @vegard @vbabka *PROMPTLY INSTALLS AVOCADO INSIDE CRANIAL CAVITY*

@lkundrak @vegard @vbabka OH HAIL AVOCADO SATAN 🥑 🪓🐔

@ljs @vegard @vbabka PRAISE BE TO THE AVOCADO LORD
🥑🪓🥑

@ljs @vegard AVOCADON'TS!