(The First Part of) The 2022 Sweet Potato Harvest

It is about time that I get the last remaining items planted in the fall garden.  That would be carrots, radishes, turnips, mustard greens, and spinach.  But before I get those in the ground, I need some room.  As is always the case, the sweet potato crop is engulfing almost a quarter of the square footage of the garden.  In order to plant the remaining crops, I've got to harvest the sweet potatoes.  

We've discussed previously how dry it's been, so in anticipation of the harvest, I irrigated the sweet potatoes the night before to loosen up the soil, thinking that if I didn't, the ground would be rock-hard.  The crop includes both the Beauregard variety as well as an heirloom Golden Wonder variety.

To dig them up, I use some digging forks.  They work great.  The soil wasn't compacted at all.  In fact the four inches of mulch I had covered the soil with had all composted and added good organic matter.  Here is a nice Beauregard sweet potato.

Here is another and this is indicative of the average size of sweet potato that I was digging up.  They are okay for eating, but mainly for making sweet potato fries or mashed sweet potatoes.

I dug up about a third of the sweet potato patch and decided I'd plant carrots in the harvested area and allow the remaining sweet potatoes to grow for a few more weeks before I attempt to harvest again.

As is the case year after year, the cows line up at the garden fence to eat the sweet potato vines I toss over to them.  They finished them all off in no time at all.

Tricia came and joined me and we hand-sorted the sweet potatoes into four different buckets.  Once sorted, we'll hang them for curing.

These are the "cattle feed" sort.  They are the small, skinny roots that we will feed to the cows.  Cows absolutely LOVE eating sweet potatoes.  We'll supplement some of these into their feed each day once it gets colder and the grass has died.

The ones in this sort or Very Small.  We use these for juicing or for cutting in half and roasting in the oven.

The ones in this sort are the "bakers."  We'll bake these and slather with butter and eat as a side dish.

Finally, this sort includes the "monsters."  These are so big they oftentimes aren't edible as they become hard and stringy.

Last year we harvested 192 pounds of sweet potatoes.  We haven't weighed all these yet, but we will.  I'll keep track of the number so that when we harvest the remainder, we can add the numbers together for our records.