Monday, November 19, 2012

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.

VarietyPoundssqftlb/sqft
Garnet10.3542.59
Beauregard34.90281.25
Purple9.6681.21
Korean Purple4.1080.51
Unknown Purple3.7680.47
Unknown White2.6480.33

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.

23 comments:

  1. Congratulation! Very impressed with your sweet potatoes harvest. I am tired of fattening up the underground critters so will not be planting any next year (may be 2 plants for the vines). Would be interested to see what quantities another locations will produce.

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  2. Wow! What an amazing sweet potato haul!!! I didn't get around to planting sweet potatoes this year but it is still on my list :-) Hope you have a great week, Daphne!

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  3. I just love swiss chard. Wished I had gotten some sowed at the end of summer too! Yours looks great!

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  4. Oh how nice your sweet potatoes look! I have never grown them, but would like to try someday.

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  5. Hmmm.... I wonder how some sweet potatoes would pack in your bag.

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  6. I am very impressed with that sweet potato haul! They look like reall nice shaped tubers too. I know they would not grow well here in our very cool growing climate but I do like to eat them and envy you having such a nice stash for the winter.

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  7. A very good harvest this week, your totals are approaching that 700 pound mark now! You're doing great!!!!

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  8. That is a great haul of sweet potatoes, and it sure puts my 35 pounds to shame! That should be fun doing the taste-testing.

    I've never tried Garnet. This year I grew Beauregard and Hernandez, which do well here if the rabbits don't eat the vines like they did this year.

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  9. Sandhill Preservation Center offers a great deal of heirloom sweet potatoes.

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  10. Awesome sweet potato harvest! 65 lbs will probably be plenty for the year if you can keep them from sprouting. We got 45 lbs from out 7 slips and that yielded 25 quarts of sweet potatoes.

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  11. I'll just have to rejoice with your harvest of sweet potatoes since I probably don't have the heat needed at the coast and the garden square footage. Aren't they beautiful? And all that vitamin A and the bioactive substances that can do good things in our bodies.

    So much to be thankful for. Susan

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  12. We were just talking about planting some of these next year! Great job.

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  13. That´s a fantastic harvest of sweet potatoes! Guess I´ll have to continue buy mine, since I can´t even grow aubergines in a good way. Love Your swiss chard as well! Have a nice week! :) Mia

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  14. Apologies my first link doesn't work. Great lot of sweet potatoes - that is a great crop. I grew mine in partial shade last year and they did OK it was my first year of growing them so I don't have a feel for how well they would have done with full sun. It will be interesting to see how much variation there is.

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  15. I should try growing sweet potatoes, as I can no longer eat potatoes. (Dang nightshade allergies...) I wonder how they do in slug-infested Northern California?

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  16. Your chard is so much prettier than mine. We had some sleet a while back which made some pock marks on my chard and something has been chewing on it, so it's not pretty but it still tasted great. That's an amazing harvest of sweet potatoes - 65 pounds!

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  17. Congratulations for your sweet potatoes harvest, I really love sweet potatoes!

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  18. Isn't it fun to have so many varieties of sweet potatoes? I love the process of growing out several varieties to find out which ones work best for you. It's a surprise every time!

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  19. I'm looking forward to trying sweet potatoes next year. That's quite a good harvest. Today was the day to pull my leeks. I should have done it last week, since I was only able to get half of them out of the ground.

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  20. Your sweet potatoes look great. I'm working myself up to trying potatoes on my balcony...need to figure out how it can be done in a tiny space.

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  21. Nice harvest of sweet potatoes! I wish I would have planted a little more Kale and Swiss Chard. Nancy

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  22. I find the sprouts don't get much larger if the potatoes are not rooted. I've put Georgia Jets in the basement with 1/4" sprouts and they are the same size in the spring - but start growing immediately when I root the sweet potatos. At least with sprouts, you know to root the other end. I think that if you rub all the sprouts off the Purple, you will get very few (if any) slips in the spring.

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  23. Last year the snails destroyed my potatos and tomatoes. This year I got snail-eating ducks and pullets and my harvest improved 900% AND I got fertilizer, eggs and rural entertainment from the flock. Next year I am going to try sweet potatoes because I LOVE LOVE LOVE sweet potato bisquits!! Come visit the flock here in Vermont, when you have a chance: www.tailgait.blogspot.com

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