Mulberry, my harvest was nothing to brag about, but I think a lot of my problems was from wet soil. My small experimental garden (only 4 plants) all rotted. They also were not protected from the deer. I still think there may be a couple of Beauregard plants mixed in with the ornamentals along the driveway, but they are in wet soil and the deer are keeping them eaten back.

My mom turned 90 last Friday. She and my step dad require a lot of care and my garden in very low on my "To do" list. However I have been eating fresh broccoli, cabbage and greens. My peppers are still producing well also.

Do you have a current soil test for the plot where you grew those sweet potatoes?

I'm curious because I plan to grow some next year. I have read articles saying too much nitrogen can cause that.

Dorothy,

That is a shockingly bad harvest, and not at all up to your usual standards. I guess the plants used up most of their energy recovering from being eaten? I hope that next year will be better.

I dug about half my sweet potatoes this afternoon and it isn't a uniformly great harvest, but some varieties have produced fairly well though others didn't. We've been in drought endlessly and I know I didn't water them enough. I planted a lot of varieties that were new to me this year, so didn't know what kind of yield to expect from the ones I haven't grown before. Their soil was rock hard when I dug, and we had a lot of rain in October so I thought it would have a lot more moisture in it. I grew them in a new raised bed we built this spring just for potatoes. It is all above ground and lined with hardware cloth to keep the voles out. I don't think I have the soil quite right yet, so expect yields from that bed will improve as the soil improves. Clearly the bed drains too quickly. I'll have to work on that.

Larry, Just once I'd like to have wet soil that stays wet for longer than a day.

The deer already ate all the sweet potato vines I threw on the compost pile, so when they couldn't find anything on the pile they wanted today, they came into the yard and were in the chicken run eating hen scratch....brazen little thieves that they are. It is a big shock to be walking towards the chicken coop with a bucket of hen scratch in your hand and to see three deer standing there looking at that bucket of food with lust and longing in their eyes.

I'm trying to get everything possible harvested before the frost hits us on Saturday morning, and today I finished harvesting the peppers, yanking out the plants as I went along. Even when you're on pepper overload, it still is sad on the day when you yank out the plants. I'm gonna miss them. I postponed tearing out any plants to speak of until yesterday, and I'm already not liking all those bare spots in the garden. I'd been yanking one thing here and one thing there, but since everything was overgrown, nothing looked bare. After all the plants I took out yesterday and today, there's now big bare spots. I'd like to get all the garden cleanup done before next week's rain, but doubt that I'll manage to get all of it done that quickly.

Dawn

Johnny, It was definitely the deer. We've been growing sweets for years and this was the first failure. Somewhere in GW's archives are some pics of bountiful harvests past that Dawn alluded to.

Dawn, I bought 12 slips (total) from George of 6 varieties and was so looking forward to trying them. The other 6 were my own slips from Beauregard. Glenn picked the rest of our peppers yesterday. Now I need to roast and peel the poblanos and Joe Parker anaheims. I'll keep the few sweet bananas to eat on. The only thing left in the garden is the 4x30 ft bed of greens, including the daikons in another post. I also have bok choy, lettuce, and beets in that bed.

Dorothy, I feel for you!

I still have to dig about half of ours. My earlier planting was in a high ridge and has produced quite well. The later planting was flat in the ground. Some of those plants hardly produced. Some produced well, albeit with smaller roots. Next year, perhaps, I will do a side by side, simultaneous planting of hilled and unhilled, so as to make a more accurate assessment of the difference hilling makes.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Got mine out today. The hilled plot did best, but they were all sorta puny. The one in 5" of soil inside a planter produced the largest but only a few tubers. I have 2 varieties. Unfortunately, they're mixed up now.

My son is excited for sweet potato pie. Fortunately, I have sufficient for a couple pies and some tubers for next year.

I don't know if you ever watch the food channel on TV but there is a guy on there that has a show called 'Good Eats' named Alton Brown. Anyway to get to what I'm trying to tell is on one of his shows he was telling about Herbs and what they were good for and he said that if you would grow Rosemary around your garden deer would not bother it as they hate the smell of it. Now, I don't know it really works but it wouldn't hurt to try it next year. I know how agitating it can be to have deer come in and eat your stuff. They came one night and ate all the leaves off of my sweet potatoes, cowpeas & grapevines, it looked other worldly when I went out the garden and saw all the naked vines. What cowpeas they didn't eat they pulled up or tromped on. Baby deer make cute pictures but I do not encourage them around my property, I have enough problems other pest.

Auther, Well, with all due respect to him, I have had deer in my garden all the time with rosemary and many other herbs in it. That's the reason we now have an 8' tall fence around it.

Those lists of plants (like rosemary) that "Deer Don't/Won't Eat" amuse me because I've had them eat most of the things on that list. I think one of the key factors is how hungry they are---if they are hungry enough, they'll eat almost anything.

Dawn

My garden is definitely too big to surround with Rosemary. So sometime next winter it will get an 8 ft tall fence too.

Dorothy, Can you grow Rosemary? I have had trouble with it and wondered if I get too much rain to have it in the ground. Like you, I believe the 8 foot fence is the answer in your case.

Carol, I have had a succession of Rosemary plants over the years. I had 2 lovely plants in the ground for 3 winters (beginning in fall of 10) but the -4 night last winter took them out. So I bought 2 more and potted them into 5 gallon pots. They will spend the coldest part of the winter in the greenhouse this winter.

Well I'm sorry, just trying to help.