The taste of groundhogs

Sweet Tatorman's picture

Ha! I would wager that at least 9 of 10 readers have misinterpreted my subject line. This is about exploration of the taste preferences of groundhogs and not about what they taste like.
Groundhogs love sweetpotatoes, both the foliage and the tubers. Consequentially the Tatorman is not fond of groundhogs. Last year I had one that managed to breach my electric fencing for an extended period of time before being effectively dealt which. I noted that of my five varieties grown it mostly confined it's predation to two varieties. While there are other possible explanations, I wondered if this reflected a taste preference. Sweet potato greens can be eaten as a cooked green and as such are popular in some Asian cuisine. I have tried then as cooked greens in the past but do not routinely eat them as I find picking enough to be worthwhile to be a bit tedious. Contributing to this is the fact I was harvesting just the last 3 or 4 inches of the vines since longer than that the mainstems are tough. I decided to revisit this recently instead harvesting leaves only of any age and found that these could be cooked to tender in a reasonable length of time, ~20-30 minutes. This makes for faster harvesting. I tried one variety at a time, two of which were not preferred by last year's problem groundhog and one which was. Bottom line was that I found all three to be very similar. Perhaps groundhogs have a more discriminating palate but who knows? No mystery solved here.

I think you should give groundhog a try!
It can't be worse than the snapping turtle you cooked earlier this year.

At any rate, it would be a different degree of gaminess.

mountainmoma's picture

I had a neighbor years ago who was very ... I dunno the right word... connected to the unseen parts of the world, down to earth, real thing. Anyways, we were talking about gophers once, and she basically dealt with her gopher problem by talking to them, they would come up to her and she could even just put them into a box. She had tried to talk to them about just keeping out of the garden, but she says they are realy very dumb creatures. So, if groundhogs are similar to gophers in that regard, you may be giving them too much credit to think that there was a good reason for their preference

Sweet Tatorman's picture

I don't think your gopher charmer would have much luck with the groundhogs here. If you are within 100 yards and they see you move, they head for a hole pronto. That would make it hard to initiate much of a conversation. This may be the result of generations of selective pressure in the form of firearms.

mountainmoma's picture

Also, you wouldnt have the touch to talk to them, so yeah, you wont get near them. The point was that she said they are actually very stupid. So I wouldnt give your groundhogs too much credit, they likely have no good reason for a preference of one from teh other of your sweet potatoes