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The Day She Planted the Sweet Potatoes
Part Two
I have various ways I grow sweet potatoes, & of course, every year is a different experiment.
Usually I create a Playpen out of moveable wire fencing, put it somewhere, add a bunch of compost, etc, plant the potatoes, & hope for the best. This works really good if you plant them in the middle of a leaf mulch pile that is 1.5 or more years old. The worms have already done their magic, so there is actually soil there instead of just clay.
I’ve also made a playpen around well established beds with a fair amount of success. The potato vines love climbing, & you can pretty much plant them & then walk away for 3 month, just giving an occasional drink if it doesn’t rain.
My best sweet potato haul was a raised bed made out of straw bales. I made a thick layer of cardboard across the bottom, & filled the form with various layers of soil, compost, manure, etc. When we were ready to dig up tators, we were amazed to find some that were the size of a newborn baby!!! And guess what? They weren’t ideal for baking, but they were great cubed up & fried, although it took every skillet in the kitchen to cook them. We’d eat as much as we wanted for breakfast, & then make a coconut curry for dinner, adding the leftovers, plus greens, shallots, etc.

So this year’s sweet potato experiment: I already have 8 wire frames that I used to grow potatoes in. I no longer grow potatoes because my feet hurt when I eat them, although I do still occasionally eat them anyway, especially if I find volunteers in my garden somewhere. The frames are circular, roughly 3 feet across, 2 feet tall. My plan is to put those frames in various locations around the garden, line them with cardboard (I save cardboard all year for these little projects), & then fill them with the usual mix of growing stuff, then plant one sweet potato slip in the center of each one.
In 3 months I’ll let you all know how this experiment turned out!

So while I’ve been eating breakfast & drinking this tea, which is a great breakfast tea, with a nice punch, & an earthy quality that makes it perfect for a gardening day, my 2 sons have been putting together another 8 wire frames. (4 foot tall cheap fencing wire, cut long ways so that each section is 2 feet tall, & then cut into 10 foot lengths, more or less). Our first run to Lowes will be to get more fencing, because we need 8 more frames.