Potatoes in May?

A few weeks ago some of my potato pots were looking like this, coming along great.  I figured I had a few months before they would be ready.

Well a few weeks ago the leaves started dying off (these are the pots where I did not cover them in our last freeze and I had some leaf die back and they did seem to recover).  I started noticing that more and more leaves started to die.  I guess I had envisioned large leaves in the pot and then the leaves turning yellow as a sign that the potatoes would be ready.  I guess these plants were stressed and gave up.

I started these pots back in February (toward the end of potato planting season).

I decided to check to see what was under the soil and see if anything was salvageable at least the soil may have been.

Here is what I found from 2 of the 3 buckets:

This is the end result from 2 of the buckets where the leaves were gone.  I did not have a scale, so not sure how much they all weighed, maybe 2-3 pounds combined.

There is one bucket left with one stem of leaves hanging on.  I will wait until it is gone to harvest any potatoes.

I do have other pots and a another potato bed containing potatoes planted later, so I will post when those are ready to be harvested.

Agapanthus, Lily of the Nile

This is the first year that I actually caught the Agapanthus in the pre-bloom stage.  Wow this is truly amazing at how the pod splits from all the little flower buds it is holding.  Any day now the the pretty wispy flowers will emerge and I know butterfly's will be soon to follow.  I have more plants from the original couple that I planted.  I think the new plants will take a few years to bloom since the original plants took 2 1/2 years to bloom..  I can't wait for the flowers to emerge.

Plant Identification Of The Week: Green Leaves With Burgundy Veins

Can you help me identify this plant, forgot the name.  Received it and it seeds during a plant swap.  Would really like to know what it is so that I can figure out where it should be planted in the garden.  This morning I separated the 4 plants into their own individual pots, because the roots were starting to become root bound (that was real quick).

Ladybugs-How to Attract And Keep Them

This is a video that I came across while watching the Central Texas Gardener.  Trisha Shirey discusses the life of the ladybug, especially the larvae stage and how aphids play a part in the feeding of ladybugs.  I found this very interesting because I have seen eggs like this before and thought it was something else, so I removed them (losing some very beneficial bugs that my garden needed).  I know this is the time of the year that these bugs are very active.  Thought you may enjoy.