2019 Sweet Potato Harvest

I yielded about 3-4 lbs of sweet potatoes (1/4 of a 5 gallon bucket) from the one sweet potato I sprouted (from last year's harvest). This is quite a bit less than last years harvest (10-15 lbs from two potatoes purchased from the grocery store), but still rather decent given the poor growing conditions.

Spring started about a month late which provided a rather short growing season. I tried to get the sweet potatoes in the soil as soon as possible and nearly got them frozen in a cold spell in which the temperature dropped below freezing. Out of desperation I covered each plant with Tupperware bowls secured in place with rocks on top. I also put a little mulch around the edges to keep them warm. This did the the trick, as I only lost one plant out of eight. This method worked well enough that I'm planning on experimenting with it in coming years to extend the growing season.

We also had an insect invasion (mostly small black beetles and moths, but also some grass hoppers) which resulted in some moderate leaf damage. For the most part the insects avoided the sweet potatoes.

Because I started sprouting the sweet potatoes early, I was able to grow and plant six slips (five of which survived to maturity). I also planted the remaining two potato halves. Here are the sweet potatoes that I harvested from each half:

And here is the sum of all the sweet potatoes harvested from the slips:

As you can see the halves produced a lot more potatoes per plant. I'm guessing most of this is due to the head-start the halves had over the slips, but I also gave the halves better soil (softer with more organic matter).

Peas, Potatoes, and Tomatoes

I planted a small row of peas and got some volunteer potatoes that sprouted up out of the compost I used to fertilize the peas. I've got extra space so I'm letting them grow.

If I recall correctly these tomatoes were started indoors maybe a few weeks after I started sprouting the sweet potatoes. They are a cherry tomato variety. I'm using overhead emitters to water them. I prepared the soil with a good amount of worm castings from my worm bin since tomatoes are heavy feeders.

Strawberries Look Promising

Last fall I buried the strawberries in a pile of wood scraps. They are now starting to push through the pile. I expect it will take several seasons for these limbs to fully digest into the soil, but I'm sure the strawberries are already feeding off of them to a degree.

Here are some up close pictures of the forming berries:

Sprouting Sweet Potatoes

I'm starting the sweet potato sprouting early this year because last year I started in March, which didn't give the sweet potatoes enough time to form slips. I saved one sweet potato from last year for this purpose and it's held up remarkably well. The flesh is still firm and no doubt still has good flavor.

February 1

Onion Harvest

This is the largest of the onions I harvested this year. I was forced to harvest early because I noticed some rot developing on some of the onions. Apparently the once per day watering was too much. I cut down on watering towards the end to every other day, but it was too little too late. The rot was minimal and I pretty much got the whole harvest of what I had planted, although the onions were about half the size I had hoped for. I think it may be possible to water this like potatoes, flood them once per week.

November 16

I used a mandolin to slice up the bulk of the onions and dehydrated them for use in soups, stews, etc. I might have gotten about three lbs of raw onion out of a 10 foot row.

Sweet Potatoes

This is the initial setup. The row on the right (south side) is for sweet potatoes and the row on the left is for yellow onions. Set up using 1/2 black drip lines with DIG adjustable drippers (from Home Depot) spaced every two foot on the potatoes. Trenches are 10 foot long and one foot deep (about a shovel blade's depth), spaced four foot apart center to center. The sweet potato trench was filled with some somewhat predigested shredded cardboard and some peat moss in rather clay dense soil.

April 30

After three months of growth you can see melons growing in between the onions and sweet potatoes. The watermelons are pretty easy to identify, but I initially mistook the cantaloupe to be some kind of squash. I let it grow figuring I'd just rip it out later if I discovered it wasn't something I wanted. It turned out to be some of the best cantaloupe I've grown so far. I harvested at least five high quality melons off of it. The watermelon didn't fair so well. They grew to a good size, but I picked the them all too soon so all I got were immature bland melons :/

July 29

I estimate about a 10 to 15 lbs yield which filled a 5-gallon bucket. All this from two sweet potatoes bought from the local grocery store. Initially was planning on growing slips and planting those, but the slips weren't ready by May so I just planted the four sprouted tuber halves as is. If I had more time to develop the slips I probably could have gotten a much larger yield out of the two tubers. The harvest was good considering the soil wasn't in the best shape.

October 15

I watered for an hour or two every day for the first month, then cut back to every other day for several months. Watered really heavy once per week the last month before harvest. I imagine I could have watered once per week much earlier on, perhaps as early as a month after planting.

Pallet Grow Box

My progress so far on a growbox made entirely from salvaged pallet wood.