HOw To CONTAINER GROWN SWEET POTATO HARVEST MONDAY


Every Monday, Daphne's Dandelions hosts "Harvest Monday" where bloggers can post their harvests.  Click her link above to see what others are harvesting and see below for what we harvested:


So last May, we PLANTED some sweet potato slips that we had ROOTED AND GROWN .  We used two large metal trashcans as containers.  After we saw how big they had gotten, we decided it was time to harvest them.  This is the one on the left side...


...and this is the one on the right side (photos on the original blog post).  For some reason, this one didn't grow as well as the other one.  Same watering schedule, same light, maybe just not as good a start to the slips?




The first thing I did was clip off all the trailing vines and toss them in the compost bin.  Then I dragged the very heavy cans over to the nearest unused raised beds.



 I pulled up the vines on top of the can and immediately got a few.  Hopefully there would be more further down in the container...



...I dug out around this one and it was a beautiful, almost perfect sweet potato.  Side note, is there nothing more fun than digging for potatoes?  It's like buried treasure!



Do you know where these were?  Not in the cans...they were attached to the vines when I pulled them up from from ground!  Kind of like sweet potato carrots, ha. 



I flipped the cans into the empty raised beds and spread them out.  It was an easy way to do the sorting without making a mess in the yard or on the mulch.



One upside of the sorting method is lots of fresh and rich soil added to two of the empty raised beds.  That will be good for getting them ready for Winter sleep.
Container grown sweet potato harvesting
So above are the mostly odd shaped ones, and below are the five "best ones" that we pulled from the two containers.  We should still be able to eat the long thin ones, right?  Might be a new experience, LOL.  They must 'cure' of course, we have to do that first so that the starches turn to sugars.  

Harvesting sweet potatoes
SO...I have a few questions.  Since this was our first attempt, I will not rate it as epic fail, we did start with pretty much nothing but a couple of sprouts and gained almost 7 lbs so that's free sweet potatoes.  But my question is, what caused the odd, long shaped ones?  I'm thinking maybe the soil was too compact?  These almost perfect, "normal" shaped ones were in the upper portions of the two containers and then when I dumped them out completely the others were the oddly shaped potatoes, more like carrots. 

Is there a soil ratio recommendation?  A special combination?  Did we leave them in too long?  Not long enough?  Too much water?  Not enough deep watering?  It was successful enough that we'll definitely do it again next year but we just thought we might see what we could do differently next time around to get a better crop.

This week's vegetable harvest:  6 lb 13 oz
_________________________________

Total harvest YTD:  22 lb 9 oz

Happy Harvesting!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Update Seed dormancy and its importance

Image
Seed dormancy and its importance. https://cststudy.blogspot.com/                                                Seed Dormancy Definition:   The term dormancy refers to lack of growth in any plant part due to either internally or externally induced factors. Seed technologist use the term of refers to non-germination resulting from conditions within the seeds.  Dormancy is the state of inhibits growth of seeds or other plant organs as a result of internal causes not due to environmental condition. In other word, the unavailability of well developed mature, perfectly viable and healthy seed to germinate when placed under favorable conditions for germination is called dormancy or rest period of seed. Important of seed dormancy:...
Read more

New Update Methods of Fertilizer Application

Image
Methods of Fertilizer Application. https://cststudy.blogspot.com/ B.Sc.Ag. (Hons) Part-I  Methods of Fertilizer Application Fertilizer recovery is greatly influenced by method of its application. Method of application varies according to the spacing of crop, type of fertilizer material, time of application, etc. A brief account of these points could be explained as under : A.Method of application of solid fertilizer materials Solid materials may be applied in following ways: 1. Broadcasting Even and uniform spreading of dry solid fertilizers by hand or spreader over the entire field before or after sowing of the crop is termed as broadcasting. Well decomposed FYM, compost, oil cake, bone meal, urea, superphosphate and lime are applied by this method. Advantages This method is easy, less time taking, cheap and more convenient to the farmers. This method proves effective- i.            ...
Read more

New Update Seasons for rice crop: Aus, Aman, Boro

Image
B.Sc.Ag. (Hons) Part-I    Agronomy Seasons for rice crop: Aus, Aman, Boro.https://cststudy.blogspot.com/ 2. Seasons for rice crop Three seasons viz. aus, anzan and boro are noticed with respect to rice cultivation. a)       Aus season: The word aus has been derived from the Sansicrit ashu meaning quick or early. The season designates the cultivation of the rice varieties which are planted in mid March-April and harvested in mid June-July. (The season is synonymous to kharif- I). Examples-Local aus varieties: Dular, Dharial, Hashikalmi, Morichbeti, Shaita, Panbira High yielding cuts varieties: Nizami (BR 20), Niamot (BR 21), Rahmat (BR 24), Shraboni (BR 26) b)       Aman season: The word aman has been derived from Arabic meaning safety which indicates stability of the crop. The season designates the cultivation of the rice varieties which are planted in mid July and harvested in mid November-December. (Th...
Read more