We Dig Sweet Potatoes

Just prior to Thanksgiving, I got busy digging up sweet potatoes from the "jungle" that grows up each and every year.  Well over a decade ago it all started with a Beauregard sweet potato thrown in the compost pile.  Since that time they have come up on their own every year.  At some point, maybe 10 years ago, I planted some Golden Wonder heirloom sweet potatoes that I got from a guy named the barefoot farmer up in Tennessee at a sustainable agriculture conference.  Those things were prolific.  They ended up crowding out all of our Beauregards.

Golden Wonders are smaller sweet potatoes, but they are delicious.  I told Tricia next year I'm going to get the Beauregards reestablished in the garden.  Here is a photo of all the sweet potato vines just prior to our digging.

Years ago, I dug up the whole sweet potato patch with a shovel, but I learned quickly that some garden forks do the job better and easier.  The only thing you really have to watch out for is forking right through the middle of a big, fat sweet potato.  

This is the standard size of a Golden Wonder.  The flesh is a light orange color.  The Beauregard is a bigger sweet potato with a deep dark orange color.

I generally begin digging on the south end of the patch and dig in three foot swaths, putting the sweet potatoes in a wagon and the vines in a big blue tub that I toss over to the cows.  The LOVE sweet potato vines.

Pretty soon, after some back-breaking labor, the sweet potato patch has been completely dug up.

We then sort the sweet potatoes.  The huge ones on the left.  The large to average sized ones in the middle.  The small to tiny sized one in the red bucket.  The ones in the red bucket will be fed to the cows.

Finally, I got the rock rake and leveled out the freshly dug earth.  This will be planted this week with spinach, mustard greens, radishes and turnips.

Overall, it was an average crop.  I'm not going to complain.  We used several nice ones to make the "Ruth's Chris Steakhouse sweet potato casserole" recipe for Thanksgiving.  It was a tasty side dish for sure.