One Potato, Two Potato, Sweet Potato, More...

So…Let the record reflect:

1)   I am very new to this whole garden thing

2)   Were it not for my almanac interpreting, sign-reading mentor of a farmer friend Thurman, I’d have not managed to have gotten even this far

3)   Of the many things I’ve attempted to grow (this year marks year 3 for the blonde/beginner garden 101 thing) I’m not so great at tomatoes; I’m slightly better with potatoes (of the Irish variety) but thanks to my really sandy soil, I’ve been uber blessed with really great sweet potatoes (So much so that this year, I’ve dedicated an entire row just to them!) Suffice it to say, I’ve developed a whole new love for that Sweet Potato Queen lady who writes books about such moments~ God love her…Bless her heart!

But while setting my slips (this is not a Southern girl euphemism…To the contrary, it’s what you do if you hope to pull sweet potatoes by fall) I ran across a number of challenges that I thought I’d just share, in case this is your first time out…Cause when it comes to sweet potatoes, there are a few things to look out for…#1 of which can be bunnies…Which brings me to point #1~

1)   Bunnies LOVE sweet potato leaves…(Their leaves are dark. The plants are healthy. Of all the challenges I ran into in year one of planting a garden, it was  my sweet potatoes' leaves that brought me the most unwanted guests (cute though, those bunnies were) …Answer to this: spray cheyanne pepper on those leaves or get yourself some Pyrenees to bark at things coming after your goats in the night. My crop got lots better in year 2 because I stuck ‘em right next to my goat pen, and not nare a bunny dared stick around after dark, once TJ got to barking…

2)   Sweet Potatoes are the last crop in and the last crop pulled…(which makes for a food you can eat all winter. Heck, I’m still eating on last year’s crop now. But here’s what you need to know:)

a)    Once you dig ‘em out of the groud, store ‘em and leave ‘em…(i.e. don’t be moving those sweet potatoes around). I have a friend born of Irish immigrants who hates sweet potatoes to this day...Reason being, once they pulled ‘em (done just before the first frost, meaning sweet potatoes stay in the ground till the last minute) his Grandma taught him “don’t touch ‘em till you’re ready to eat ‘em (which is the same thing Thurman taught me)…meaning

b)   You store ‘em in a cool, dry place. For my friend, that was under his grandma’s bed where one by one, they were plucked and eaten, day by day, all winter long. For me, that under-the-bed thing equates to my cool, dark basement; where the last of last year’s crop sits still today, still in the same baskets I used when I picked ‘em. Bottom line: sweet potatoes are sensitive. They bruise easily. You don’t want to handle them anymore than is necessary as human skin can bring their resins to surface and cause them to rot, so pick ‘em, pull ‘em, store ‘em, eat ‘em. It’s that simple. Anything extra is an unnecessary risk to a food that is otherwise, one of the healthiest things for a human being since raw broccoli.

For those just now planting yours (as I have mine, just this week), here are a few things I’ve learned along the way…

First off, sweet potatoes love heat/ hate cold…They originated from tropical climates, so it's important we get past all our Indian/Blackberry/Locust winter- things before setting out slips (“Slips” being the plant-babies we potted and spawned of last year’s eyes; in other words, this isn’t one you start from seeds, unless you’re a serious horticulturist, which I am not)

Second, (Note for first time gardenin’ folk like me) Sweet potatoes don’t need a lot of extra fertilizer. Matter of fact, you can over fertilize if not careful, making this a perfect plant for brown thumbs everywhere (at least in Tennessee). Of all the things in my garden I coddle and oversaturate with goat poop, I refrain from doing this for my sweet potatoes….They do just fine on their own. (Meanwhile, I give their goat-poop-portion back over to my tomatoes who need coddling from day one. Now tomatoes….they’re high maintenance. And they're perfectly proud to admit it.)

3)   Keep in mind, sweet potato leaves “vine” when developing, which means you’ve got about 2 weeks after you plug these babies in the ground, to even hope to pull weeds out from around them. Once they start their vining/expansion thing above ground, the leaves of this plant will out shade most any weed that hopes to grow there…But do beware that bunnies and deer find their dark leaves to be MOST enticing, and while the plant itself is developing underground, that dark leafy part happening on top is there to keep it nourished with nutrients happening from sun and soil above…so if bunnies grab what’s on top, ain’t nothing good happening below…

4)   Sweet Potatoes are the last thing I’ll harvest…usually around October …Bottom line: you pull ‘em before the first frost, going into your winter season…They need to stay in the warm soil as long as possible, (so bottom line: watch your weather channel). These babies will sustain you through the winter, provided you let them soak up the sun all summer, (like a teen on a Cancun spring break~)