November 2nd, 2022
What’s in your share?
Broccoli
Salad Mix *
Cilantro
Radishes
Sweet Potatoes*
Yellow Storage Onions
* Salad Mix - The lettuce in this bag was planted specifically for the November Share! We weren’t sure what the weather would be like, but it’s been warm and beautiful, so the leaves are growing fast! You might need to rip or chop the leaves before eating, but either way, be sure to keep up with your salads because we have salad mix planned for each week in November.
Back in March, we got seed from our friends at Pinehold Gardens, also in Oak Creek.
Sweet Potatoes! - This is the first time we’ve ever grown them. We planned that this season would be experimental for sweet potatoes; learning their growing habits, pest pressure, and yields before offering them a permanent spot on the veggie roster. Turns out, they’re here to stay! We learned that they grow fast and have an awesome leaf canopy that shades out weeds and helps to retain moisture. We learned that we need to be absolutely DILIGENT about rodent prevention!!! Mice and voles tunnel under the ground and are attracted to the sweetness of the tubers (if I had $3 for every pound of sweet potatoes the mice ruined…) But rodent damage aside, the yields we were awesome, and even though we planned to stash the entire harvest for our household (the 7 of us eat A LOT over the winter), we had enough to share with you all for one week.
With a tutorial from David and Sandy and no idea what we were really doing, the slips started to grow!
The thing I’d like to improve on is curing the sweet potatoes. They need to be kept pretty warm and dry for several days after harvest in order for them to store through the winter. We don’t really have a place that is consistently 80 degrees at night in September/October, so I will not advertise their storability - eat them within a couple weeks. It’s common to peel sweet potatoes, so if you have any with a blemish on the outside, simply peel it off until the bright orange skin is revealed. We’ve been eating tons of them and hope you enjoy this sweet fall treat! All the photos are of our new journey with this crop.
Plucked the “slips” off the seeds and put them in water.
Starting to root!
Slips with roots ready for planting.
Leafy canopy looking lush about two months before harvest.