Garden's End: Sweet Potatoes!

This is it--the last crop to be harvested. Sweet potatoes! Even all of our apples have been picked by now. There are still a few small-sized peppers that were worth watering (the fresnos, mad hatters, and mini yummy series) but the main crop is over.

We tried sweet potatoes years ago and received nothing for our efforts but tiny fingerlings. We found out that we'd been digging them shortly after the garden potatoes but sweet potatoes have a much longer growing season! Here in Northern Indiana, we did them in late September or early October--before frost, anyway. Stan dug one plant to see and they were definitely big enough so he dug up all of the garden ones. Another way to tell if they are ready is when the leaves/vines begin to yellow. The ones he planted by the shed from last year's crop are still green so we'll wait another week or two for them.

Last year, we set out 25 plants and had far too many potatoes: over 100 pounds worth. Quite a few ended up going to waste in the spring. The ones in the shed that were too close to the ground froze. This year, with only 12 plants in the garden, we were able to fit all of them on two folding tables in the shed, high above the ground. They key is not to move the potatoes once they've been stored--turning them moves the sugar around and hurts the quality. It sounds odd, I know, but we followed that rule last year and had sweet potatoes until the end of March!

We didn't water the sweet potatoes as much this year--they are odd shaped and misshapen--but the good thing is that they are nice and dry to store, without any mud on them (mud holds bugs and diseases).

The harvest was much better than I'd expected--I am encouraged! Like finding edible hidden treasure. I don't know the variety--I wasn't with Stan when he bought them at Lowe's. I just know that they are the vining, not bush type. The vines yield better!

Now, I wonder what new things I can make with them?