Next Up for Harvest in October - Sweet Potatoes!

Before the sun went down on Saturday, I checked in on the status of our sweet potato crop.  Always at this time of the year, the sweet potato vines have covered almost a third of the garden.  Similar to other years, the vines (or slips) just come up on their own each spring.  We've never had to plant them.  They grew from composting the remnants of a Beauregard Sweet Potato we bought at the grocery store.  The annual sweet potato crops where (probably by now) over a thousand pounds of sweet potatoes have been harvested due to that fortuitous activity of composting!

Let me correct something in that previous paragraph.  We did actually plant three sweet potatoes about five years ago after getting an heirloom sweet potato variety called "Golden Wonder" while at a sustainable agriculture conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Both produce nice sweet potatoes, but Tricia likes the Beauregards the best.  I think I do too.  In looking at the vines below, they are lush, thick and healthy.  Although you can't judge a book by its cover, you can usually expect a good harvest if the vines look like this.

Sweet potatoes generally take between 3 to 5 months to mature.  They've been growing since late spring, so in a couple of weeks when October rolls around, I'll clip the vines, feed them to the cows, and begin digging potatoes.  They will continue growing until the frost kills them, but I need that space to plant sugar snap peas, and carrots, kale, parsley, bok choy, spinach, radishes, turnips and other items in our fall lineup.

The cows came running up to the fence when they saw me in the garden.  They share in the sweet potato harvest as we always toss the vines over the fence.  When I tell you cows love sweet potato vines, I am not exaggerating.  I just couldn't tell them to wait until October.  I took my clippers and snipped off some vines to share with the cows.  There you go, cows.  I think they consider this to be an amuse-bouche. 

Rosie, Clarabelle, Luna, Aussie and Clarabull gathered to dine on the sweet vines.  The goats arrived, too.  

When you clip sweet potato vines a sticky, white, milky substance oozes from the vines.  It will get on your hands and stain them.  I'm sure it must be very sweet,  The cows eat the leaves first and then they take their time chewing the vines.  Later, they sat in the shade and chewed their cud, satisfied with their good fortune and looking forward to the weekend in October when they'll get to eat a bunch more.  We're looking forward to that day, too, as hopefully we'll fill a few sacks with fat sweet potatoes.