It has been a busy week at Sweet Tator land

Sweet Tatorman's picture

It has been a much wetter than average year so far here with rainfall every month January through May above average and the total for the period almost equal to the average rainfall for a full year. It has been rare for the soil to be dry enough for tillage. I finally got my chance to till for the sweet tators at the beginning of the week. The ridges have been hilled and the planting has finally begun.

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Sweet Tatorman's picture

Photo below of slip production cold frame opened up and slips ready for cutting and planting

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alice's picture

Wow that certainly is a fine looking garden, congratulations on showing the fruit of all your hard work.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

Thanks for the shout out. I do note with a bit of amusement that the top photo is largely a barren space excepting the Irish potatoes in the background. Yesterday while enjoying my afternoon adult beverage in the shade I decided to get up and walk over to the garden to take a couple of photos from angles that show that there actually are plants in the garden. Reviewing the two photos posted here I was struck by the idea that some of the items shown must seem to be exotics at 52N but are largely common subsistence fare in many parts of the tropics and subtropics. The two light green rows in the center of the first photo are peanuts (or groundnuts in some English speaking countries; I don't know the convention in the UK) which I suspect are rare in gardens in your area. In the second photo below the small plants in the near corner are Okra which I suspect are equally rare. I am wondering how these two items as well as sweetpotatoes are seen by the UK consumer. Are they foods seen as eaten by people in far away lesser developed countries and rarely in the UK or instead have they been embraced by UK consumers? Here in the US, sweetpotatoes were widely consumed in the warmer parts of the country 100 years ago as well as during the war years but largely fell from favor. In the last 20 years per capita consumption has doubled but is only at about 3 1/2 kg/year. I doubt that more than 1 in 10 americans eat them more frequently than twice a month.

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Sweet Tatorman's picture

Okra are small plants in a row in the near corner.

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alice's picture

Yes, those are all exotics up here. We see those in the supermarket, because crops are imported from all over the world. Some like bananas come by boat as they can be artificially ripened. Peanut oil we see bottled for cooking. But doesn't grow here except someone might grow it as a novelty in a greenhouse. I know several people who eat sweet potatoes regularly despite the importation and price because the starches in those don't seem to upset some sensitive digestive systems with related auto-immune symptoms, the auto immune protocol (AIP) thing seems to work for some people and that means a lot of turnips/swede, carrots, and parsnips if you have to stick to local foods. Some people I know also eat tropical plantain, the one related to banana, either for similar health reasons or for cultural reasons as we have plenty of Ghanain and Carribean origin people around.

I think your garden looks lovely because I don't see any weeds, that must take plenty of tending to. Beautiful ridges for the sweet tators too. And how lovely to have all that space. I love hearing about what you are up to and listening in for tips for when I next have a bigger garden to grow veggies in. There are some things that are the same in several different climates.

David Trammel's picture

Maybe you can clear something up for me.

I decided to try potatoes in a few containers and in the ground this year. What happened is I bought a bag of fingerlings to eat, left them on the shelf too long and they sprouted. Most of them had an eye sprout at both ends, so I cut them in half, stuck them in a seed flat with some water and put them under one of my grow lamps.

Unfortunately we had too much rain for me to get them planted in the ground yet. Though I did get 6 five gallon containers planted this week. Here's the starts I have.

Now my question is: The plants are about 4-5 inches tall. I planted them up to just beneath their top leaves. Do the roots them grow down past the seed potato and develop new potatoes among those roots? How tall of a mound should I make? The bed is about 15 feet long and 2 1/2 feet wide. Means I can't go too tall. What kind of spacing should I do (18")?

Going to be an interesting experiment with them, between the buckets and the ground.

Blueberry's picture

When planting (Irish) potatoes they only make new potatoes above the seed potato. So as thy grow you will need to hill them. In my part of the world I will start to dig new potatoes app. 65 days after planting your mileage will be different. Good luck.

David Trammel's picture

I'd heard that fact be wondered about it.

That means the container potatoes I planted are probably not going to produce. The seed potatoes are only 3-4 inches down. I planted 3 last week and 3 more just yesterday. Wonder if I dig those three back up, take about 12" of dirt out, then replant them with the intention of adding more dirt. Going to be hard to get sun to them though, being at the bottom of a five gallon container.

For ground plants I guess its plant them now, and add more dirt as they grow.

Blueberry's picture

You can place a wire cage around the buckets and fill the cage with straw of what ever you have.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

I can confirm what Mr B has said. The new potatoes form off of the upward growing stems rather than the downward growing roots hence they will be above the seed potato. I usually plant at a spacing of 8" about 4" deep and hill up once the plant is over a foot tall with the final depth of the seed potato ending up at least a foot deep. Some folk will hill up several times but being somewhat lazy (or constructively lazy as I prefer to think about it) I do it just once, typically about a week before the first blossoms open. In digging up soil for the purpose of hilling avoid digging close to the plant as you will risk damaging the roots which may result in reduced yield.
Mr B's scheme of using wire mesh and straw will facilitate harvesting new potatoes without digging up the whole plant. You can check for them about 3 weeks after blossoming. If the objective is to maximize yield, don't dig until the plants start to die back.
BTW, those plants in the background of the first picture in the OP are potatoes. Potatoes don't do well in hot weather and I think my climate is rather marginal for potatoes. The past two years have had very poor yields. This year the plants are looking great which I attribute to cooler than average months of April and May. For the 18 years of data I have for this location the average of average daily temperatures for April and May are the second lowest in the record.

David Trammel's picture

I have both tomato cages and wire screen. Think I'll try that, rather than try and replant the potato slips. Thanks.

One question though, how to best store the extra hay while waiting to use it? Figure I need probably one bail, once I break it open its going to attract insects. I can get a large garbage bin with lid but in the heat of Summer will it grow moldy or rot?

Blueberry's picture

Try to store hay so that it gets air circulation and out of the rain. If you take nice green hay and place some in a black plastic garbage bag. Place bag in the back yard full sun for about a week. After a week in the sun remove the hay from the bag and it will look like it just came out the back door of a cow! Try and find baled pine needles they take a long time to break down and could be used in the garden for weed control after the potatoes are harvested. The baled pine needles could be stored outdoors under a tree.

David Trammel's picture

I wonder if something like the wood shavings for guinea pigs might work. Be a little more expensive but could be stored inside and/or bought when I needed more. Figure its just the volume of a tomato cage I'm filling.

Blueberry's picture

Something like this also good for garden mulch . https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/tractor-supply-co-fine-premium...

alice's picture

Like Blueberry said down thread? And I am guessing you might be able to cart those for free from local coffee outlets.

Sweet Tatorman, that looks like a heck of a lot of work. Good luck!

My sweet potatoes have been in the ground for a month and are looking good. I’m on a hill and have been grateful for the rain to keep my soil soft as I’ve dug new beds. I’m growing 2 slips from my grocery store sweet potato and Vineless Puerto Rico Sweet Potatoes that came out of Tennessee.

My white potatoes are doing well In the Atlanta area, too. The ones I bought from the local Feed & Seed are doing better than the sprouted grocery store potatoes. I’ll have to remember that this might be an unusually good year for them in the south with our cool spring. I wonder if setting them out very early will help in future years?

I have some white potatoes in a huge pot that I’m topping off with dry grass clippings and half finished compost. I am learning that having a good source of mulch (and place to keep it) is a key resource/skill, if I’m doing to garden efficiently. For the potatoes in the ground, I dug a 10”-12” deep trench and saved the soil mounded up beside it for filling in. Now I have a trench where the mounded soil was and my potatoes are well mounded - if that makes sense.

Everything I’m doing is an experiment. I’m really liking the concept of “collapse now so you can make mistakes that won’t starve you”. The weirdest thing I’ve run into is my inability to get a green bean more than 3” out of the ground without something eating it - with the exception of pole beans in my little patch of corn. (The corn patch is more by itself and not integrated in with the perennials.) Another “oops” was doing a lousy job growing tomatoes, egg plants and peppers from seed. I finally sent my niece (who is already over and done w/ Covid) out for plants. This week I harvested and prepared some fava beans - hard work but yummy! It also brought home the fact that I’m not even remotely close to growing enough to feed myself.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

>Sweet Tatorman, that looks like a heck of a lot of work<
Yes, all of that shovel work is a workout. The upside is that I don't waste any money on a gym membership.
> I wonder if setting them out very early will help in future years?<
All else being equal they tend to do better if they can make it most of the way to maturity before it turns blazing hot.
When to plant? This decision is always a bit of a crapshoot. Potatoes will emerge from cooler soil than most vegetables but are not at all freeze hardy. Any above ground foliage frozen will turn black and die. All is not lost though as the seed potato will send up new shoots but it will have expended a portion of it's reserves on the initial foliage that was killed so yield can be expected to suffer. We Georgia gardeners have access to a very useful resource via the U of Georgia Ag school. They run a network of automated weather stations with both real time and historic data accessible online. The link below is to the one that I am guessing is nearest to you. Check it out. Relevant to the question of when to plant, on the left hand menu select "Seasonal" and from there "Last Frost". The black bar near the top of the page has some useful drop down menus. I get a lot of use out of the "Calculator" one.
http://georgiaweather.net/index.php?content=calculator&variable=CC&site=...

Sweet Tatorman, that is awesome!! The Kennesaw station is actually closer. I am definitely going to have fun with it.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

I had wondered if Kennesaw station might be closer to you. Many of these stations have been in operation for decades. The one at Kennesaw was installed just a couple of years ago. So while it likely is your best choice for current and recent data you may still want to use one a bit further away if you are interested in a larger historical dataset. From the drop down menus at the top of a page under "Background info" you can find the station installation dates. Unfortunately, when they reworked their website a few years ago any data prior to 2003 became inaccessible.

alice's picture

Performance of mulches will vary a lot based on location. In the tropics where everything decomposes fast you might be able to use wood shavings, I don't have any experience. Up here with the polar bears at 52 N (England) it's best not to use things like wood shavings on the garden unless to suppress everything: the process of the wood shavings rotting down takes a long time and denudes the soil of nutrients that the plants need. So we can only things like /well rotted/ manure to top dress as a plant food, otherwise the decomposition of the manure burns the plants it's supposed to feed.

I know it's possible to use for inst coffee grounds to mulch and feed in the tropics as the nitrogen is more accessible at warmer temps, but up here in the north they don't work much; we need to feed with higher proportion of nitrogen hence using industrial by products like oilseedmeal as a nitrogen source in Solomon/Reinheimers organif fertilizer recipes. Well rotted stuff can definitely be used to mulch, if it's already gone through those processes it doesn't any longer steal from the soil and plants you're trying to grow. Hope that's some use. Bit short of time but wanted to say about wood shavings only having limited usefulness at least up here in England.

Blueberry's picture

Living is Florida coffee grounds can be used as a nitrogen source simply by side dressing plants. Citrus tress love the stuff. Cotton seed meal is used as a animal feed if applied around plants have to be very careful not to burn the plants.

ClareBroommaker's picture

My very fist garden had a blanket of cotton seed HULLS. So less nitrogen than the seed made into a meal, but still with a fair amount of cotton fiber clinging to it. I remember it being really easy to spread and put in place maybe four inches thick. It was like a blanket, yet did not hold water within it, but let the rain pass through to the soil. It really inhibited germination of weeds. I don't live anywhere near a cotton gin anymore and besides I hear awful things about chemicals in cotton debris and would be scared to use it any more. That first garden was back when I was a teenager.

alice's picture

I love hearing about the different industrial by-products in the different climates and locations.

Blueberry's picture

Alice you are due east of Minard Castle. http://www.megalithicireland.com/Minard%20Castle.html

alice's picture

Yes in fact I think at Minard Castle I think there's a typo there and they are nearer 56N. The islands of Britain are much further north than the climate would suggest, kept warm by the north atlantic circulating currents. We're on a parallel with Calgary, Lake Winnipeg, Labrador City, in Canada. It does affect how things grow, I probably talk about it too much in growing discussions.

Whoops you meant Minard Castle, County Kerry, Eire not Minard Castle, Inverary, Scotland.

I've not done this. Local garden shops sell cocoa hull mulch (discards from Hershey and Reese). The smell of chocolate lingers for a couple of weeks so for a while your garden smells like chocolate!

ClareBroommaker's picture

Being woody, pecan shell mulch lasts a pretty long time, but it is hell to walk on with bare feet. Again, though, I'm in the wrong biogeographic region to use that anymore. Wouldn't it be fine combining the pecan with the cocoa?

So what is it that I used to read recommendations to use if you lived by the ocean? Seaweed washed on the beaches?

Truth is, I've got my eye on a clump of grass straw my neighbor has resting against a fence since putting roundup on the grass a month ago. I think if it sits another week or so I'd be comfortable using it on the paths between garden beds.

Once I raked 2/3 of the 40 foot wide, block long parkway to get the dried grass after the city mowed knee-high lawn.

But for dtrammel, I'd think he'd want to use either straw or hay for his potato tower. It would be not so much a mulch but a soil alternative for his potatoes.

alice's picture

Am I remembering right you're in California David? I think it's possible coffee ground mulch might work great there like Blueberry said upthread about using them in Florida.