sweet potato sprouts

 
 
My sweet potatoes have started to make cute little sprouts! Yippee! I remembered at the last minute to save a few of my homegrown sweet potatoes for sprouting. The last ones were the smallest – a mix of white (Hannah), oranges (Jewel and Beauregard) and reds (Garnet). For years, I’ve had trouble getting sweet potatoes to sprout at our old house. I’ve read they need warmth, but whatever I did didn’t seem to work – maybe because my old house had mostly cool spaces. A couple weeks ago, I put…
 
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my seed potatoes are here

 
 
I ordered two varieties of potatoes this year. Instead of the 4 or 5 I usually order. I am trying to cut back…. They look really nice. Burbank Russet and German Butterball from Fedco Moose Tubers. Some years I have planted them right away. Other years I wait and let them sprout a bit. I am wondering what is the “correct” thing to do. Another thing I’m wondering about is different planting methods. I have always planted in trenches then back filled as the spuds sprout. I end up with…
 
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sweet potato sprouts

 
 
I have three sweet potato varieties sprouting: Beauregard, Jewel and Hannah. I am keeping them at 80*F, as they don’t seem to grow at all at cooler temperatures. Still, they are growing slowly.
 
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starting to sprout sweet potatoes

 
 
To get a head start, I put my sweets for sprouting in small bowls with half filled with water. I lined them up under the radiator for extra warmth. I will be collecting some pint jars (and toothpicks) for setting them up correctly soon. Here is a great link for reading about how to sprout sweets: Starting Sweet Slips. I have three varieties starting. Two from my harvest from this year (Jewel’s and Hannah’s – these are dry textured, orange and white flesh) and a new one I picked up…
 
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to the start of another week – cheers!

 
 
Today I pulled the carrots I sowed in August. Pretty baby carrots. Somehow a rabbit seems to have found his way into the garden and ate off most of the carrot greens. I am fascinated that he only ate the carrots. Next year I am planning a chicken wire tunnel over the carrots. I ended up harvesting about a dozen heads of lettuce today as there may be a hard frost tonight. Some lettuce plants I dug and moved into my cold frame to see how they do there over…
 
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digging sweet potatoes

 
 
Yesterday I dug about half of my sweet potato bed. It was drizzling on the eve of Hurricane Sandy’s arrival. I told myself I wouldn’t get my hands dirty as I planned to shop afterwards. I often fail at this plan. My hands got really muddy. I dug a nice pile of sweets.
 
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Egyptian walking onions

 
 
I was given a single perennial walking onion three years ago. I planted it, then didn’t pay much attention as I didn’t really know what to do with them. The onions didn’t have a specific time when the needed to be harvested and they had these funny topsets bulbs. But I’ve gradually become braver and have been pulling up a few plants now and then. They look like scallions or bunching onions, but the flavor is unique and pungent – similar to a shallot. They tend to disintegrate with cooking,…
 
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sweet sweet

 
 
I dug up a big ol’ sweet potater today! I’m holding off on digging the bed ’til after a frost kills the plants back. But its not like a bed of squash where you know what’s growing, what you’re waiting for. I’ve stuck a fork in the ground a couple times in the last month to see if I find anything and both times i found teeny little sweet potatoes. Third time today, and I found a giant! It looks like a white fleshed sweet potato. Just over a foot…
 
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Kathy Martin
This is a journal of my vegetable gardens. Skippy thinks the garden is his, even though I do all the work. We're located near Boston, in USDA zone 6. I have bees, chickens, fruit trees and berry bushes, too. I use all sustainable organic methods and strive to grow all of my family's vegetables myself. -Kathy


weeks and counting until my last spring frost

What I planted recently

Jan 21
thyme, lettuce, escarole

Feb 21
celery, celeriac, parsley, leeks

March 11
cabbage, kale, arugula



What I'm planting soon

April 1
peppers, eggplants, marigolds, beets

April 12
tomatoes, basil, sunflowers

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My garden this week

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17 years of archives!

Check out the food pantry farm I helped to start up:

Aurelia's Garden

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Skippy’s vegetable of the month – Egyptian walking onions!

“I envision a day when every city and town has front and back yards, community gardens and growing spaces, nurtured into life by neighbors who are no longer strangers, but friends who delight in the edible rewards offered from a garden they discovered together.” – Greg Peterson

"What can happen to a seed is a miracle."

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