Harvesting 1/3 of the 2016 Sweet Potato Crop

I checked the calendar and noticed that our sweet potatoes have been growing for about 4 and 1/2 months now.  Harvest data that I read said that you can begin harvesting anywhere between 4 and 5 months.  Russ was in from college and figured that the perfect weather this weekend made it an optimal time to get out to the garden and dig up some sweet potatoes.

As the photo below evidences, sweet potato vines have taken over the northernmost parts of the garden.  The only barren spot you can see is the area that was planted in peanuts prior to us digging those up last weekend.  This plot of sweet potatoes include an heirloom variety from Tennessee called "Golden Wonder" that Russ was able to get some seed potatoes and propagate.

Sweet Potato Vines

We generally pull back some vines and carefully insert a shovel into the softened soil and pry upward.  This unearths some nice sweet potatoes, but you must be careful or you'll cut them in half with your shovel.

Digging up sweet potatoes is kind of like digging for buried treasure.  You can't see what's underneath the soil and it is always exciting to pull up the sweet potatoes from beneath the surface.

We like to eat the sweet potatoes that we dig up, but the cows, goats, guineas, and chickens also get into the action, too.  We throw the sweet potato vines over the garden fence and the animals go crazy over them.  In no time flat they've reduced the succulent vines to nothing!

About a third of the way into the harvest, we stopped and made a judgement call. We postponed the harvest of the remainder of the sweet potatoes for another month or so.  I'll likely work up the area into a nice seedbed in the spot that is dug up in the photo below and plant some lettuce.

Intermission

So why did we take a break?  Were we tired?  Yes, but that's not the reason.  Sort of like the fisherman who pulls in a fish and then throws it back in the water to grow some more, we did the same with our sweet potatoes.

While we did get some nice looking sweet potatoes, as you can see, many of them could benefit from an extra month or two (or three) of growing.  They will keep just fine in the ground and we'll check back later.  Of course we'll allow these to cure for three weeks or so and then we'll bake them up or have some sweet potato fries while we wait for the others to mature.