Posted on 10/22/2010 5:49:06 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
We haven’t had much rain other than the tropical storm - Hermie. It was sprinkling earlier, but nothing heavy on radar yet.
Well I will attempt to describe... Use a potato fork and start a couple of feet away from the base of the plant, as the vines root out and can have sweet potatoes well away from the base. These won't necessarily be all that large but these small ones can be saved for next year's slips.
Sweet potatoes bruise easily and so once exposed carefully pull the soil away from them and lay them in an area away from where you are digging... Sweet potatoes also sunburn easily so keep that in mind as you dig them.
Gently rub any soil off them with your hands. I use thick cardboard shallow boxes that I can close the top to keep direct light away from the potatoes.
I store them in my laundry room as the furnace is there as well and the same temperature is maintained throughout the winter. And I just cooked up what sweet potatoes I had left from last year's harvest.
You can if you do not have the space, put the sweet potatoes in double line paper grocery bag and put under a cabinet to store as well. They need a warm (not hot) dry environment to store over the winter.
Oh do not wash the sweet potato until you are ready to cook as the water tends to make them rot.
Please add us to your ping list. We’d appreciate it. This is the second week we’ve stumbled upon it, and would like to participate when we can. Looks like fun.
Been raining for several days this week, and now with the weekend approaching, actually I should say upon us, and the ground nice and soft we’ll be out picking weeds out of the Lily patch up on the hill, so no we won’t be wearing anything other than the old grubs as we’ll be on hands and knees git’n reel durty.
Hopefully this rain we’ve been having moves on pretty soon to someplace else that needs it as badly as we did. I think we’ve had enough now.
Diana in Wisconsin has proven to me what I thought all along.... she can grow things even with rocks. She is my gardening goddess! Just a thought.
It’s finally about to get wet here so I’m cleaning out the garden shed and getting stuff put back up for winter. Last week I had the log splitter dragged out to resplit 3 cords of firewood, which is all stacked and tarped now.
In the garden, my sweet potatoes are going like gangbusters, with the vines almost a foot long and lots of leaves. Same with my red potatoes that have really been soaking up the rays for the past couple of weeks. Once the frost takes the plant, we’ll start digging, and I have high hopes for those sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving.
My compost pile is located directly opposite the cleanout door for the henhouse. I’m cleaning the roost right into the pile now, and mixing it in with my small rototiller. I changed out the litter in the coop last week, and added a bunch of straw and grass clippings, so it’s cooking pretty hot right now. I’ll be removing it in stages, adding leaves and then layering the hot stuff back in to heat up the pile.
I shoveled chicken poop into a trash can all summer, and kept it dessicated with ashes from the grill and the occasional scoop of cat litter. Now that the leaves are getting ready to fall, I’ll be adding them in layers to the compost pile, layered in with dessicated chicken poop. Once it’s all rehydrated it will be cooking out there all winter. By next May I should have a good 2 1/2 yards of finished compost, about half of which will go into the raspberry bed, and the rest to the other flower and veggy beds.
Great. Now I’ll have THIS in my head all day, LOL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiEP0eJAxM&feature=fvst
You will too though, LOL! :)
Quick! Wash your ears out with this! Much more uplifting. Great music to weed by, LOL! You can really get the hoe swingin’ to this! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrPaEUjtYvQ&feature=related
My garden’s still going ... no freeze just yet. Some years, it has already by this time. My second planting of dragon tongue beans is ready to pick, and I have been harvesting dwarf pak choi. My alma paprika peppers are going strong. My tomato plants are still going, but very slow, and not producing much. I wonder how long my luck can hold ... been enjoying beautiful weather.
Not much of a garden here this year for me, but some advice for everyone.
I was out in the yard cleaning up before the snow and tripped over the tines of a rake. Stepped on a nail and it went in to the joint. By the time I was able to get to the Dr. it was swollen, red and hot. They sent me to the “big city” to have emergency surgery and spent 4 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics. Could have been a lot worse and could have lost my foot.
Be careful out in the yard, snakes and spiders are not the only things you have to watch out for.
BTW love seeing the pics of everyones harvest.
Ouch!
Rain may be on the way with TS Richard.
It’s snowing here......
Oh no! Where is here?
Anything that's pink of blue. Looks like the gorwing season is over for us.
I always can some of my sweet potatoes too. I rarely keep anything stored in only one fashion just in case something goes wrong somewhere. Dehydration is also a good method of preserving. Last week I took some dehydrated sweet potatoes and put them in the coffee grinder to make a powder, which I added to some pasta dough. The resulting noodles were fabulous and very pretty.
LOL at your ‘Grow Dammit’ stone! I love it.
There are showers and t’storms building south of Austin now, and more to the SW of the city. Nothing near my home yet, but it looks like some are headed that way.
We have some boxwoods next to the house that are over 6’ tall. I had to get a ladder to trim the top of them last year.
Mornin’. When you’ve had an adequate amount of coffee and can function ... would you please tell me what I need to do to use donkey poo in the compost pile? Now that I have a good compost heap that has been going for a couple of months, I figure I should be using the stuff when I muck out their house. Do I need to let the poo break down in a separate pile before adding to the compost heap?
J, if weren’t for the successive tropical storms this summer, we’d be in a terrible draught right now.
I’m going a little bulb crazy in a new garden I just built.
As for the mosquitoes, only thing that works is carrying a large box fan around with you to work in as they can’t fly in even a breeze.
Found the best nursery EVER, Countryside, on Pond Springs. John Dramgoole did a remote there last weekend and spent nearly half a day’s pay on clearanced ($1.00) perennials! Check it out.
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