Bondage: 1, Co-operation: 0

This year's allotment garden project of growing potatoes in a cage seems to be a success. We haven't dismantled it yet, but my anxiety levels were too high to just let it be. What if nothing was happening in there? What if, when we took it apart, there was not a single potato inside? I had to find out. I am the kind of person who will rip bulbs out of the ground from a simple inability to believe that they can grow.

Buried treasure

But to my great delight, there were potatoes in there, and they were growing. Of the three varieties we had planted, we found French Fingerlings and Pacific Russets. The Russian Blue potatoes were planted at the bottom of the cage and, even though I plunged my arm in the soil to my elbow, I couldn't reach them. We've had just the one little taste so far but they were delicious.

The cage was constructed from a roll of gardener's mesh (1/2 inch squares) and held together with twist-ties. Pretty high-tech, I know. We filled it with compost and planted the seed potatoes (from Eagle Creek in Alberta) in rings around the outside of the cage. Cliff, senior farmer at our allotment garden, has given the system his seal of approval: he says that rodents don't like the open sides and are discouraged from burrowing. 

Not so successful was our attempt at Native American companion planting. We had such high hopes for our "Three Sisters" planting -- a co-operative effort by corn, beans and squash. The idea is that the beans climb up the corn stalks, using them for support, while the squash moils around below in an energetic squash-like manner. Meanwhile the beans supply nitrogen to the soil, giving the sibs a welcome boost.

Our Three Sisters, supposedly so mutually supportive, have instead behaved like real sisters: the beans tried to strangle the corn, while both of them turned on the squash and killed it. How the indigenous peoples ever managed to get succotash out of this deal is beyond me. It's like watching the Darwinian struggle play out in your own tiny patch of Eden.

Voracious beans, strangled corn; RIP squash

Our corn grew barely taller than our tomatos, which the beans were also trying to annihilate. Meanwhile, everyone else's corn was going gangbusters until a recent big storm flattened them all. I was sad about this, of course, because we gardeners are not at all competitive.

A while ago another gardener came by our plot on a fact-finding mission and pointed excitedly at our chard: "I have the exact same kind in my garden!"

He peered closer.

"Only, why is yours so small?"

Someone else's zinnias