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.

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Sweet Potatoes

Garden: Green Beans

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Background:  Due to a variety of circumstances, we did not get our spring garden planted during the spring.  Planting occurred in early summer instead, and we are just now starting to harvest some veggies.  This is very late for a garden in Arkansas.  

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We must cover many crops -- like green beans -- with wire hoops.  The cottontail rabbits will destroy them if we don't.  The hoops did a great job of keeping the rabbits out, but couldn't keep the bean plants in.  Jo prepared for her first picking on Friday by removing all the beans on the outside of the wire.  Then, we lifted the hoops off the beans.  That worked well.  Most of the stems and leaves pulled through the wire just fine.
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Only after the wire hoops were removed did we realize how much the beans were depending upon them for support.  The beans sprawled all over the place.  (Bucket is unconcerned and waiting for Jo to start picking.  Jo shares a few beans with the dogs.  Bucket and Rusty eat fresh green beans as if they were dogs treats.  In fact, you have to keep an eye on the dogs or they will begin picking their own.)
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Jo picked almost ten pounds of beans.  Then, we replaced the wire hoops, tucking the beans back inside as best we could.  I hope the bean plants hold up to all the rough handling they received.  Under normal circumstances, the next picking should be even larger and then taper off quickly.
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Garden: Green Beans

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

Wednesday, 6/27/07

Very little rain fell today, only .15 of an inch -- just enough to cut Jo's morning walk with the dogs short. There were several times during the day that it looked as if it might rain but didn't. We are right on the very edge of the weather system that's dumping so much rain on north central Texas and Oklahoma.

Jo picked green beans, but only got a little over three pounds today. Production is obviously winding down dramatically. There are very few blooms or small beans left on the plants in the garden, and the rabbits seem to have escalated their attack. They're not just coming into the garden and nibbling; a couple of cottontails seem to have taken up residence in the bean bed. I chase them out every time I go out to the garden, but they return. Still, Jo's managed to get 29 quarts of green beans into the deep freeze. That's a lot better than we've done in several years.

I cleaned a bunch of leaves out from under our north porch, shredded them with the lawnmower and applied them as mulch in the garden, plus some bed edging and weeding.

The newly emerging corn survived the night thanks to the wire enclosures Jo and I rigged. Those wire tunnels are a nuisance, but they get the job done.

Wednesday, 6/27/07