Harvest Monday, November 19th, 2012

I don't have a huge amount of actual harvests this week. I found that some of the veggies were rotting in my fridge, so I used the week to eat up all that was in there. Except for a few radishes and turnips I succeeded. Next week will be a bigger real harvest as I need to pick the carrots and cabbage before they all freeze.

Most of what is on the harvest tally this Monday is my supply of sweet potatoes. I didn't weigh them before. I was going to weigh them when they were sweet and I was starting to eat them. They aren't very sweet yet, but they are tasty in a more normal potato starchy kind of way. They make an excellent mashed potato. But since I was eating them, I figured I ought to get the tally done so I don't accidentally eat them before their weight is tallied. Well it was over 50 pounds. I was shocked. I didn't think sweet potatoes would be that good of a crop in our short season. Though we did have a really hot summer last year.

I'm going to go through the numbers on the sweet potatoes. I'll be tasting them all winter long to see which ones I like, but for now it is just raw numbers. I grew them in my circle garden. It doesn't have a regular shape so the square footage is questionable. But I think the two beds are about 32 square feet each. Similar to a 4'x8' bed. One bed had the sweet potatoes that were sent to me by Norma (Korean Purple, Purple, an unknown purple, an unknown white). One had the ones from the supermarket (Beauregard, Garnet). All were short season sweet potatoes.

Variety	Pounds	sqft	lb/sqft
Garnet	10.35	4	2.59
Beauregard	34.90	28	1.25
Purple	9.66	8	1.21
Korean Purple	4.10	8	0.51
Unknown Purple	3.76	8	0.47
Unknown White	2.64	8	0.33

I was impressed with the Garnet variety which only had two slips (as the potatoes didn't want to produce slips). It did have the best spot for sweet potatoes though. It was in the corners that stick out so was surrounded by three sides of brick. In general plants near the bricks did best. It might not do so well in a cooler spot. But it will be grown again next year to find out. I got a total of 65 pounds in 64 square feet, so it was a good yield for the space, especially since it wasn't the only crop to be grown in that space this year. I put in some fast growing Asian greens in one bed in the spring. The other had Kale growing there that had over wintered from the year before. And this fall I planted one bed for overwintered spinach.

The problem is that next year I'll have to grow them in another bed. I do like to rotate things to keep diseases at bay. So they won't have the nice brick sides. They will be in a bed that doesn't get as much sun (none of my main beds get as much as the circle garden). So will they grow as well there? I may find that in future years I want plant sweet potatoes by alternating them in each of the circle beds. Next year I'm only growing one bed of sweet potatoes instead of two. I'm not sure I really need 65 pounds of sweet potatoes. So with just one bed planted up that might work.

My intention is to grow the first three on the list again as they are such good producers. I'd like to add Georgia Jet if I can get my hands on it. Purple is a bit problematic though. All the other potatoes stopped growing when picked. But all the Purples are trying to sprout. Admittedly they have been stored at temps in the 60Fs. Mostly high 60Fs until now. It was warm in the basement. But none of the other have this trouble. I go down occasionally and rub any sprouts off. If this ruins their texture, I might forgo Purple. I don't want to do this as the purple anthocyanins add variety to the nutrients I'm getting with my stored food over the winter.

• Greens 0.34 lbs
• Sweet Potatoes 65.41 lbs
• Weekly total 65.75 lbs
• Yearly total 694.09 lbs
• Tally $1425.62

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.