A few hours of our Sunday were spent harvesting the remaining sweet potatoes from last year and preparing the bed for this year’s planting. I have a number of new sweet potato slips on the potting bench and am also creating a few more by rooting them in water from yesterday’s harvest.

Here are the last sweet potatoes drying in the sun on our driveway yesterday. I would estimate that we harvested well over 150 lbs of sweet potatoes from this one bed. I have been offering to share sweet potatoes slips with my neighbors so they can grow their own, as they seem to do so well here.

Sweet potatoes drying on driveway
Sweet potatoes drying on driveway
Sweet potatoes drying on driveway closeup
Sweet potatoes drying on driveway closeup

 

Once all the sweet potatoes were up, it was time to re-fit the bed. Our little Troy-Bilt electric cultivator made a quick job of it and we are all prepared for planting in the next couple of days. The soil in this bed gets better and better with each season . I need to make a little deeper, but the soil is quite friable and light.

While most of this bed will be sweet potatoes again, I also plan on putting our new blueberry bush on the street-side end of this bed to increase our food production. I’ll have some video of this in the next few days.

Sweet potato bed prepared for the season
Sweet potato bed prepared for the season

 

If you’re looking for new plants for your garden this year, check out the site of our sponsor, Monrovia Plants.