This Week at the Garden: Sweet Potatoes

Planting sweet potatoes was a key garden task this week.  We preordered slips from a farm in North Carolina  in February and they arrived mid week.  Slips are shoots that are started from a mature sweet potatoes.   As the picture below shows, they are predominately a green stalk with some leaves and no roots.  They often look rough but will thrive when planted.

We plant our sweet potato slips into black plastic mulch.  The mulch adds more heat which sweet potatoes love and helps with weed control. Sweet potatoes vine and spread 3-6 feet so it is helpful to have a good system for weed control.

Over the past few seasons, we have found hooping and covering the bed with shade cloth helps get the plants established and off to a good start.  This technique is especially helpful on hot sunny days as the plants leaves are often laying on the hot plastic mulch.  We remove the shade cloth after the plants have taken root and are starting to grow.

It appears our fixes to the fence last week have been successful at keeping  the geese out of the garden!  Yeah!  In the early morning hours, the geese family with their gosling enjoy walking and exploring beyond the pond.  Wanted to share another goose family photo.

Happy Spring!  Steph Meyers, MKG Farm Manager