Twiggybet1's Blog
Twiggybet1's posts about: sweet potatoes
Jun 12, 2008 | 2:30 PM PST
Tags: sweet potatoes , rain garden
...and this is the condition they arrived in:
Any bets that they will live???? And check out the moss the company uses to "keep the shoots from drying out":
I am SO dissapointed and upset.
The first thing I did was grab a small vase and RUN to the sink to put them in water. The next thing I did was examine them closely for any residual signs of life. It doesn't look promising, folks. So then I got on the horn and notified the company. They are sending me a refund, but I would have preferred a replacement. Unfortunately, they are done shipping sweet potatoes for the season. So that means NO SWEETPOTATOES this year. It just figures they would send me my order so late. I get so irritated. They sent my shoots late last year also, but at least they weren't dry as dust and they grew. I could have planted them any time after May 10th. I am fortunate enough to live in one of the warmest areas of the state, and most of the state is 1 or even 2 zones behind my area. But the growers refuse to send the sweetpotatoes here until June, after they filled orders for every other area of the country. And then they quit shipping them. *SIGH* Now what shall I plant here:
Maybe I could try putting in some watermelon or cantaloupe or honeydew, but they may not have time to mature before frost. *sigh, again*
Update on the rest of the garden...
the pumpkin and corn are growing nicely. And my broccoli is developing heads:
Sorry the photo is sideways. My daughter took these for me. Both her and my husband like doing the fancy sideways camera thing, and I uploaded it without checking it first. So tilt your head to the right to view...
The salad greens are doing good, and the beans are getting big. This picture was taken yesterday, and I did some weeding in this area this morning, so it looks a little better now...
I sure could use some advice on my rain garden. Here is a picture of what it looked like in the fall when I first put it in:
and here is a picture that was taken yesterday:
The garbage can lid is still there because I am still looking for my made-in-the-USA solar-powered bird bath/ fountain.
I had planted it last fall mostly with assorted bulbs and some bare-roots. Somehow, it doesn't look as lush and full as I envisioned it. I filled in a bare spot in the ring with petunias a couple weeks back. The outermost ring is comprised of lavender mountain lillies (lxiolirion tataricum) and pink alpine rosy bells (allium oreophilum) and yellow alpine bells. I think it would look better if I dug up all those in the outer ring, and grouped them in spots by color, rather than leave them mixed. I color coded the plants with twist ties so I could tell them apart later. My question is (anybody out there?) must I wait until fall or at least until they are done blooming, or would they survive if I rearranged them now?
Apr 23, 2008 | 10:22 PM PST
Tag: sweet potatoes
Today was another beautiful day, sunny and warm, close to 70. I got carrots, radishes, and beets planted. I had to move them to a different area of the garden from where I planted them last year. I planted them at the opposite end of the garden. Last year, I noticed we had some root maggots, so I'm hoping to avoid that this year by using a different area for the root vegetables.
The weather man said we were supposed to get thunderstorms this morning, but it didn't happen. I'm glad, really, because then it would have been messy trying to plant things this afternoon. The garden has just recently been dry enough to work out there. Once the ice and snow melted, it was like quick sand soggy, except our soil is more clay like. I don't ever remember it being quite that mucky in previous years, I wonder if it has anything to do with hubby deciding to till in the fall instead of waiting for spring?
There are some flowers blooming in the rain garden, and some other plants are coming up nicely. I need to find the diagram I made when I planted it last fall, so I can remember what is there. I am still looking for a bird-bath, or fountain, preferably a solar-powered one, to put as a focal point in the rain garden. My problem is I am choosy. I want yard ornaments that are American made, or at least not made in China. I also need to edge the pebble splash path. My darling dog tends to scatter some pebbles when he runs over them.
Geeze, we have so many yard projects we need to do this year! I want to put trellises up along a portion of the fence to grow my squash and other viney things, and another area of the fence needs to be replaced. The hardest part of getting to any of these projects is hubby and I agreeing on how we should go about them.!!!!!
Of all my winter experiments, the only one I think is very successful is my avacado tree. That's still doing good. My mystery bulbs seem to be a troublesome weedy thing that is also popping up all over the yard, here and there in the grass, flower beds and also in the asparagus bed! My gigantic sweet potato vine finally gave up the ghost - I think I killed it with kindness. None of my frantic efforts to save it helped. My two pots of calla lillies are obviously something else, too, because they are like 2 1/2 feet tall fronds (no flowers) and I don't recall calla lillies ever getting that big. But at least they are ALIVE!
I think tomorrow would be a good day to prepare the areas I plan to plant with sweet potatos and white potatos. I need to mound up a row and cover it with black plastic mulch to warm the soil. That is, provided we don't get those thunderstorms.
