Ghost Town Farm photos

[southernmom]

Here are two garden boxes we made with scrap just lying around. There are a lot of plants in there...closest to the camera has tomatoes of varying ages, cucumbers that will climb (3 different varieties including Armenian cukes which is more of a melon and I have never tried before.) marigold seedlings and basil plant seedlings.

The second box has a lot of bush variety zuchinni, red carrots, in the back row, chinese noodle bean (also known as asparagus bean or yard long bean.) along the corners to climb-they are voracious climbers, love the heat and very prolific. I love them. And english garden peas to grow up the trellis.

I have other garden areas and all sorts of stuff growing...and we have fruit trees tucked in everywhere but the boxes are an experiment to see how they do by way of yield vs. typical rows.
I am also trying purple sweet potatoes this year! (along with my usual sweet taters.)

gardenboxes.jpg

[Redbeard]

SouthernMom teach me about sweet potatos! We planted them 2 or 3 years back and they never really got that large. we had a few get really big! but most were quite small. do you do any type of fertilizer for them? Oh ps they are still coming back. I cant seem to pull them all out of our raised beds is there a trick? And do you cure them? We must be close to you it looks like our back yard We are in Lithia.

[southernmom]

SouthernMom teach me about sweet potatos! We planted them 2 or 3 years back and they never really got that large. we had a few get really big! but most were quite small. do you do any type of fertilizer for them? Oh ps they are still coming back. I cant seem to pull them all out of our raised beds is there a trick? And do you cure them? We must be close to you it looks like our back yard We are in Lithia.

Sweet potatoes are AWESOME. What I do is chunk up a large area of ground in full or mainly full sun cause they LOVE the heat, and moderately compost. (Sweet taters like to be stressed a little so don't over do the fertilizer and don't dig super deep because a sweet potato needs a little bit of compacted soil to work against so they grow fat.) then put either the rooted sweet potato plants you can get from wal mart nursery or take 'draws' that have little roots and plant those in the ground spaced about 6 inches to a foot apart depending on my mood and let them grow. Keep them watered and weed a little here and there and they will reward you.

yes you cure them for about 15 days. Just lay them out on newspaper (don't wash them! just brush some soil off) and leave them for a few weeks and they should be good.

There are a LOT of different sweet potato varieties-there are bush varieties and their vines only reach 4 feet-such as the 'porto rico' or 'amish' or 'Vardaman'. Or you can get the vining sweet potato like 'Georgia Jet' or "beauregard'. Now is the time to order your draws.

I am going to link you to one page that tells you all the different varieties and I use that to narrow down which type I feel like growing. I don't order from this site I just like the info. https://www.sandhillpreservation.com..._potatoes.html

Now to order your draws (or slips) I use these 2 companies: http://www.sweetpotatoplant.com/our-sweet-potatoes/ and https://www.tatorman.com/

This year I ordered Centennials (my fave) and Vardaman and Beauregard.

and yes they kind of hang around in the ground they go deep. As an aside, I have tried to throw the whole sweet potato that is sprouting, in the ground and it doesn't work real well. You kind of have to pinch the draws off the tater as they start rooting and then plant that. Also, if you have a sweet potato that is sprouting you can use those draws. There are a few really good videos on youtube that I can find for you that explains the process better than I can.
Good luck and any more questions just ask!

And yep, you are just a little further Southish of me.