Otters and Sweet Potatoes

The morning after shows no signs of otter ravaging, so it seems that they visited, had a snack, and left.  Otter visit #1 final assessment:  No Problem.  (Whew!)

I braved the sweet potato cage this morning, thinking it was 90 days since planting some of the earliest sweet potato slips, so there might be sweet potatoes forming.  I used soft gloves to dig into a few of the fabric pots, and I found no sign of sweet potatoes.  So....  either something has gone awry, or it's just going to take a bit longer to see food.  I'm going with the latter, as all of my reading suggests that people plant the sweet potatoes late spring and harvest in time for the fall (October/November) so that they can have sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner.  Even though Gurneys says 90 days for vining sweet potatoes and 100 days for bush varieties, I'm going to smile and be patient.  Besides, it'll be MUCH nicer to harvest in late September/early October when the weather cools a bit and the bugs subside some.  I'm really looking forward to having sweet potatoes to eat from the P2 farm, so I really hope they make some food!

Sweet Potato Cage 6-28-19

Here it is.... the "2018 tomato cage" repurposed as the new 2019 Sweet Potato Cage.  Much better I think!  Whereas the tomatoes were frail, picky, and prone to rotty, fungally things, the sweet potatoes are exuberant and glad to be here in HOT humid Florida.  The sweet potato cage features the six varieties from Gurneys:

• Beauregard
• Bush Porto Rico
• Georgia Jet
• O'Henry
• Covington
• Vardaman

There's a sad ending to sweet potato south - the deer won, the sweet potatoes were snacked on and decimated, and bunny was exonerated from his false accusation.  I gave up...  it's not worth putting up a wall to keep the deer out when I can have a gorgeous sweet potato cage closer to the house where I can keep an eye on it and deer tend not to lurk.  BUT just to be sure, the sweet potato cage has a netting around it to deter Bambi, Ginger, and Ginormous (our deer family).  It's too magical to see the deer in the night eating from Corn Mountain - why would we want them to go away?  I just hope the netting below keeps Sweet Potato Cage safe from deer snacking.

The glorious sweet potato cage complete with vines climbing the strings secured with plastic clamps.

The vines love climbing the strings with the plastic clamps.

It's nice to see the sweet potatoes happy.

Sweet Potato Cage - More - 6-28-19

I added the pots in front of the grow bags on the ground to provide "extra" sweet potatoes.  There are three large pots on the ground with Oriental sweet potato, and three pots of Jewel Yam.  The Oriental and Jewel were each started from a single organic sweet potato from the health food store.

The grow bags are a great solution.  They're lighterweight than pots even with dirt, and they have handles so they are actually moveable (with help).

They look so happy - and this is after 10 days of drought and temperatures over 100.

Another happy shot of the long vine up the string trellis using clamps.

More Sweet Potatoes

In addition to the sweet potato cage, I've got six half whiskey barrels filled with sweet potatoes:  Oriental sweet potatoes, jewel yam, and purple sweet potatoes.  They're doing great and starting to flower already.

Yes there are six whiskey barrels under the mountain of vines :D

Sweet Potato Patch!

P2 is growing Sweet Potatoes in 2019!  On April 24th I received sweet potatoes from Gurney's, including some of their best orange sweet potato varieties like Vardaman and Covington.  The Tomato Cage in the back has been converted to the Sweet Potato Cage, but I also wanted to try a ground sweet potato patch.  This is on the south property and was essentially a wasted space.  Using 8' landscape timbers, Mark and I blocked out this location.

All was fine up until a week or so ago when cute EVIL BUNNY decided he needed a delicious snack.  The brand new plants were nibbled to the stems.  So as of yesterday, here's the addition of a 2' x 100' chicken wire fence to keep bunny out.  As of this morning, the new sweet potato I added is still alive, so it appears to work as long as bunny doesn't learn to dig under the fence.

The Sweet Potato patch has 3 sections:  1 with Okinawa Purple, and 2 and 3 with the Gurney's varieties

Section 1:  Okinawa Purple sweet potato

Section 2 Orange Sweet Potato (various varieties)

Section 3 Orange Sweet Potato (various varieties)

 

Proof that bunny didn't get in last night!  I added this new plant yesterday, so far so good :D

Sweet Potatoes!

We grew 20 lbs of Okinawa Sweet Potatoes!  I really didn't expect to get any harvest from the slips that Indy gave me in 2015, but I rather added them to the food forest as ground cover.  Lots of food forest plans include Sweet Potatoes as a ground cover to increase microbial life and to crowd out weeds, so I was happy to get them going crazy in the banana circle, the food forest, and in a few pots for fun.  The sweet potato vines are prolific here in central Florida and really did make it tough for weeds to survive in the banana circle.  They've escaped from pots in a few other places out back in the nursery, and they are a simple but beautiful green ground cover wherever they grow.  Bugs don't eat the leaves, so they always look fresh and green.

But the real surprise came in the 2 whiskey barrels that I planted some slips in 2 years ago.  Last year we had a cold winter with a couple of freezes, and when I checked for potatoes last winter after a year of growth I didn't find any potatoes.  I probably didn't dig down deep enough, but rather only grabbed a tiny fingerling or two near the surface and decided they must not have got enough of whatever they needed to produce food.

I was out last Sunday digging through pots to try to clean up for the new growing season, and I decided I would finally clean out the whiskey barrels.  The vines were incredibly long, growing way out of the pots and around the area by the papaya patch (Pip, Pop, and Peep).  As I pulled the vines out to clear out the pots for new plantings, I found THIS:

It's about 20 lbs of sweet potatoes!  The largest one in the lower left corner is 1 lb 13 oz, and an average sized one (upper right) is 3/4 of a pound.  I'm happy!  I had to dig many of them out of the bottom layer of the wood whiskey barrels, as they were lodged deep in the crevaces.  

My takeaway here is that there are a LOT of these beasts throughout the property where there are vines!  I think that's pretty cool.  I don't need that many sweet potatoes, so rather than disturb the banana circle I'll probably just leave them there and see what happens.  The microbes down in the ground licking the roots will thank me.

What's the future here at P2 for sweet potatoes?  Interestingly enough, even before I found these guys in the pots, I had already decided that I need to try growing sweet potatoes of different varieties this year.  Indy had given me Okinawa sweet potatoes (white on the outside, purple on the inside), but I know Mark prefers REAL sweet potatoes with yellow flesh.

On January 30th, I placed an order with Gurney's for a LOT of sweet potato slips.  They had a half price sale, and I figured why not try EVERY variety!  I ordered 12 slips of each:

• Beauregard
• Bush Porto Rico
• Georgia Jet
• Majesty (purple)
• O'Henry
• Covington
• Vardaman

The tomato cage is officially converted to a sweet potato cage, complete with 10 25-gallon fabric pots.  The vines will grow and be trained up the strings and hooks, just like the tomatoes.  It's going to be fun!

I also have plans for a 100' x 10' sweet potato patch out on the far property by the little pond.  There's a sandy patch that the previous owner made to potentially build something on, but it's just a sandy mound.  Perfect for sweet potatoes.  Between the sweet potato cage and the sweet potato patch, and the whiskey barrels, I will hopefully find places to plant 84 sweet potato plants.  Ok, I went overboard a bit, but why not!