"Batatas": Baton + Potatoes?
Nov. 5th, 2006 18:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI did a bunch out in the garden... I hauled in enough sweet peppers and poblanos to almost make my mother faint ("What are we going to do with them all?"), I harvested the rest of the strawberry popcorn for husking later, I pulled all the corn stalks and weeded the plots, and I harvested the sweet potatoes.
They did much better this year than last, even putting up a few flowers. Like Irish potatoes, flowering is neither good nor bad for yield, but it did mean that they were pretty happy. So today I pulled the rocks away from the raised bed, lifted the soil with a garden fork, and started rummaging carefully.
My eight plants gave me a dozen or more large sweet potatoes -- by large I mean at least as big as my fist, some as big as two of them -- and a few small roots. That's a pretty good haul. There were a couple of cracks, but overall they're in very good condition. I think I've found what they like; now I just have to replicate it next year.
The co-ops at Davis complained to me that sweet potatoes never last very long; the people there were shocked when I mentioned that I've gotten them to last five months or more, at least enough to get slips for the next season. They get a little shriveled, but they don't rot; I suspect the big difference is that nobody there knew what I meant by "curing" the roots. It's a bit of a pain -- they want 85-90 degrees at 85% humidity for 10-14 days -- but apparently it really does make a difference in how well they keep. Mine are currently in a bucket with a damp cloth at the bottom, stacked carefully to promote air spaces, and I draped a dry towel over the mouth of the bucket. Then I set a heating pad to "medium" under them. I'll check the temperature in there before I go to bed.
They're just the same dark-skinned Garnet variety that the store has, but I like growing them here. For one, just in case I ever have to be at least somewhat self-sufficient, sweet potatoes are an even better staple food than Irish potatoes. Otherwise, well, I get a satisfying haul from nine months of doing nothing -- and that's why I grow onions and garlic. :)
Oh, and as a footnote: I'm very glad sometimes that I get down on my knees and clear plots by hand, such as when I was clearing a corn patch and came across two clusters of a grade-A invasive material. I have no idea how it got there -- maybe it hitchhiked in on my shoes from the front yard -- but I carefully eradicated it, and thanked my lucky stars that it hadn't managed to go to seed yet.
They did much better this year than last, even putting up a few flowers. Like Irish potatoes, flowering is neither good nor bad for yield, but it did mean that they were pretty happy. So today I pulled the rocks away from the raised bed, lifted the soil with a garden fork, and started rummaging carefully.
My eight plants gave me a dozen or more large sweet potatoes -- by large I mean at least as big as my fist, some as big as two of them -- and a few small roots. That's a pretty good haul. There were a couple of cracks, but overall they're in very good condition. I think I've found what they like; now I just have to replicate it next year.
The co-ops at Davis complained to me that sweet potatoes never last very long; the people there were shocked when I mentioned that I've gotten them to last five months or more, at least enough to get slips for the next season. They get a little shriveled, but they don't rot; I suspect the big difference is that nobody there knew what I meant by "curing" the roots. It's a bit of a pain -- they want 85-90 degrees at 85% humidity for 10-14 days -- but apparently it really does make a difference in how well they keep. Mine are currently in a bucket with a damp cloth at the bottom, stacked carefully to promote air spaces, and I draped a dry towel over the mouth of the bucket. Then I set a heating pad to "medium" under them. I'll check the temperature in there before I go to bed.
They're just the same dark-skinned Garnet variety that the store has, but I like growing them here. For one, just in case I ever have to be at least somewhat self-sufficient, sweet potatoes are an even better staple food than Irish potatoes. Otherwise, well, I get a satisfying haul from nine months of doing nothing -- and that's why I grow onions and garlic. :)
Oh, and as a footnote: I'm very glad sometimes that I get down on my knees and clear plots by hand, such as when I was clearing a corn patch and came across two clusters of a grade-A invasive material. I have no idea how it got there -- maybe it hitchhiked in on my shoes from the front yard -- but I carefully eradicated it, and thanked my lucky stars that it hadn't managed to go to seed yet.
