Sweet Potatoes

A light freeze is predicted for this weekend, so it's time to dig our sweet potato crop.  They say the potatoes will rot if left in the ground for very long after the tops freeze back.  I don't really know if that is true or not.  We always dig when a freeze is predicted or right after the green tops are nipped by a freeze.

Jo is removing wire row covers so we can get to the bed.  It may look as if she's dancing, but her arms are wrapped around a welded wire tunnel.  The way the sweet potato vines are trimmed back to the wire shows why the wire covers are necessary.  Rabbits and/or deer would feast on the green sweet potato vines if they were not covered.

We had a mediocre sweet potato harvest this year:  A little over 47# from thirty feet of garden bed.  There was quite a bit of rodent damage, but there always is.  I don't know how to fence out mice and voles.

.

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet Potato Harvest

We received our first frost of this fall Sunday morning. Therefore, Jo and I needed to get our sweet potatoes dug or risk them rotting underground. The first step in getting the potatoes out of the ground was removing the wire cover. Deer have been in the garden feeding on the protruding sweet potato vines recently, making wire removal much easier. We didn't have to trim off the vines to expose the wire.

This plant with a couple of modest sized sweet potatoes was about as good as our harvest got. Some plants had no edible-sized potatoes. We've had paltry sweet potato harvest for the past few years. We've also enjoyed some great harvest growing this variety. I don't know what the problem is. We need to do some sweet potato growing research and, maybe, change varieties.

"Where's mine?" says Bucket. She's stationed herself between Jo and the bucket of potatoes, hoping for a sweet potato treat either intentional or accidental.

Rusty is watch, ready to join Bucket if Jo starts handing out sweet potatoes. Both dogs got an undersized potato when we were through digging. Giving it to them any sooner would have guaranteed and increased level of pestering by the dogs as we dug.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

.

Sweet Potato Harvest

Pathetic Potato Harvest

Background: Due to a variety of circumstances more or less beyond our control, Jo and I didn't even begin preparing the beds and planting our garden until after our last spring art fair which was held on the first weekend in June. Because of our late start, we didn't bother planting some crops -- like corn. We anticipated problems with other crops. We figured the question was: Would the crops produced before succumbing to the prolonged heat and dryness typical of our late summer?

One barely full flat of Yukon Golds is our pathetic potato harvest for 2008. We normally have four or five of those wooden flats heaping full.

That question proved irrelevant. The later part of this summer was much cooler and wetter than most. Had I known this in advance, I would have predicted a bumper crop of veggies. I would have been wrong. Some veggies -- like tomatoes and green beans -- produced well. Others -- like the potatoes we harvested today -- did not do so well. I really do not know why our potatoes produced so poorly. I've heard others also had poor potato yields. Ditto for peppers (bell, jalapeno, etc.) which are usually a "nothing to it" plant to grow.

A half of five gallon bucket of sweet potatoes instead of our normal harvest of 3+ buckets full.

As far as conditions unique to our garden that might have contributed to our dismal potato crop: The Yukon Golds never produced the normal amount of foliage. First they were attacked by a heavy infestation of squash bugs sucking out their juices and then blister beetles ate what little foliage the potatoes had managed to grow. Mid-season squash bugs and late season blister beetles seems especially bad the year. Squash bugs aren't usually a problem on potatoes in our garden.

We actually planted fewer sweet potato slips this year. Jo thought she might be planting the sweet potatoes too close together so they competed with each other for nutrients. She experiment by planting fewer potatoes farther apart, thinking each plant might produce more and/or larger potatoes. That experiment was a resounding failure.

The sweet potato vines were still growing well. The rabbits had even stopped keeping the edges trimmed.

We normally dig sweet potatoes right before the first frost which isn't even in our forecast yet, but we decided to go ahead and harvest them today since the ground is relatively dry and rain is in our forecast. I doubt the potatoes were apt to get any larger or more numerous.

Finally, both potato beds were hard to dig because of the tree roots that had grown into them over the summer. Perhaps those roots had robbed nutrients. (Cutting trash trees that have grown up around the edge of the garden is one of this winter's projects.)

While we dug potatoes, a variety of butterflies were enjoying the garden flowers. The zinnias are getting a bit ragged this late in the season, but they are still growing and attracting butterflies.

(Left to right: Monarch, Cloudless Sulphur and Painted Lady)

.

Pathetic Potato Harvest

Sweet Potato Harvest Disappointing

This year's sweet potato harvest was a disappointment. The bunch pictured above was the best we got in terms of size and quantity. All totaled, we only dug 39 pounds of potatoes. I was expecting a lot more from this year's crop because we've kept the vines from being eaten and the plants got plenty of water. This isn't the worst production we've ever gotten from a row of sweet potatoes, but I was hoping we'd come a lot closer to our record production of around ninety pounds.

These potatoes weren't easy to dig either. Our procedure is for me to work a spading fork under a bunch of potatoes and pry up while Jo tugs gently on the vines. The bunch of potatoes comes out of the ground and most of the dirt falls off. However, this year's sweet potato bed was on the outside of the garden. Roots from a nearby sweet gum tree had invaded the bed and prevented me from being able to pry up. The competition from those tree feeder roots may also be why our production wasn't up to expectations. I dunno.

Our sweet potato harvest is now curing in the basement. It will be about a month before they're ready to eat because you've got to give them time to convert starches into sugars. The basement isn't the best place for curing sweet potatoes, but it's all we've got. Ideally, curing should take place in a less humid environment.

Sweet Potato Harvest Disappointing

Preparing To Dig Sweet Potatoes

On Saturday Jo and I gave our sweet potatoes a haircut so we could dig them on Sunday. After planting the sweet potatoes, we covered them with welded wire hoops to keep the deer from eating the vines. Since the mesh in the welded wire is large enough for a rabbit to get through easily, we covered it with chicken wire to keep the cottontails out. Covering our sweet potatoes with wire worked. As you can see above, the vines didn't get trimmed to the ground by varmints as they have in the past. However, with sweet potato vines growing up through the wire, we couldn't the wire off without giving them a good trim. We decided to go ahead and trim away most of the vines while we were at it.

Preparing To Dig Sweet Potatoes

Sweet Potato Leaf Beetle

Sweet Potato Leaf Beetle (Typophorus nigritus)

This is one of the 35,000 described species of leaf beetles. (It's estimated that there actually be as many as 60,000 species.) Obviously, with that many species within a family (Chrysomelidae), there is a gread deal of variation, but there are still many little, green, metallic leaf beetles quite similar to this one -- so many that I wouldn't have even attempted a genus/species ID. However, one of the experts on BugGuide says that it's a Sweet Potato Leaf Beetle so who am I to argue? At least I found it in the right place, munching on the leaf of a wild morning glory, a very close relative of the sweet potato.

Sweet Potato Leaf Beetle

Monday, 7/2/07

Green Bean: I'm really glad that Jo and I were able to get the majority of the green beans before they were discovered by the rabbits. It seems as if a veggie can do okay in the garden for a while, but once the rabbits begin eating it, the damage soon becomes extensive.

Sweet Potatoes: Our sweet potatoes have been covered with welded wire tunnels ever since they were transplanted into the garden. Deer love sweet potato vines and we wanted to make certain they were protect should the deer happen to get into the garden. We also hoped the welded wire would discourage rabbits, even though they can squeeze through its mesh. Evidently, our hopes did not come true. We noticed nibbling here and there on the sweet potato vines. So...... This afternoon we covered the welded wire with chicken wire, just like we had to do for the emerging corn plants. The chicken wire will need to stay in place until we dig the sweet potatoes next fall right before the first frost. Fortunately, the sweet potato bed is heavily mulched. We won't be needing to get into it to do any weeding. Getting that chicken wire off after the vines have woven in and out of it ought to be a really fun experience, though. Oh, well. We know from past experience that the sweet potatoes won't do well at producing potatoes underground unless they've got plenty of health, green vines on top of the ground.

Tomatoes: While I cut sections of chicken wire to length for the sweet potatoes, Jo tied up some of the tomato plants that were growing into the path. The tomatoes are in cages, but many have outgrown their confinement. The aisle between the two rows of tomatoes was become a tomato jungle. We had to do something or else I wouldn't be able to keep it mowed and weeded.

No rain: It didn't actually rain today, but you could have wrung moisture out of the air, I think. When we went on our afternoon walk around four o'clock, the temperature was 81º and the relative humidity was 79%.

Monday, 7/2/07

Garden Update

The cauliflower and broccoli are doing fine. We should be picking within a couple of weeks.



Jo got the sweet potatoes planted and covered with wire.



The new potatoes made it back up through the mulch and are still growing.


The green beans should be blooming soon.



The tomatoes are in the garden and caged. Believe it or not, a few of them are already blooming, even as small as they are.

Garden Update