New For 2012 - No. 1 - Sweet Potato

A rainy November day seems a good time to get back to the computer and share some news from the allotment. I like to try something new each year and here is the first of this years experiments - growing sweet potatoes.
I took a cutting from a friends plant in 2011 about the start of September, and it quickly rooted then when the weather turned colder it started to look a bit sad so I brought it home to spend the winter on the window sill in the spare bedroom. In May it returned to the allotment and was planted in a large pot in the greenhouse. My pot was about 18" across and 12" deep. It spread well, going in all directions, covering about 12 foot end to end by autumn.

I wasn't quite sure when to dig it up and see what was there, but as the foliage began to die back I decided I couldn't wait any longer. November 7th I harvested these beauties. Hard to say whether they were limmited by the size of the pot or whether I should have waited a bit longer.

Arranged on a standard dinner plate to show the yield they weighed in at 1kg. The largest tuber was 7oz. Not a huge crop, but very usable and very tasty. I really like them mashed 50/50 with potato.
You can buy slips from lots of places, but if you know somebody else prepared to spend about £10 on an experiment do try to lift a couple of cuttings to rear your own, and once you have them don't feel you need to buy new stock every year. Being pleased with this years crop, I have already got three cuttings started in the spare room to grow for next year. Traditionaly where these were grown, new plants were raised from cuttings to perpetuate the crop shortly before harvesting.

Early Peas

So, I like mice, but that doesn't mean I want them to decimate my peas. They used to cause a lot of damage, digging up the newly germinated pea and eating the remains of the seed. Decoy feeding worked well, putting a scattering of wheat seed down to distract them, but sowing indoors works even better.
I fill two pieces of old guttering with compost then pushed the peas in about an inch with a finger. Sitting in the greenhouse they don't take long to come up and the mice don't get a look in.

Now the weather is picking up, I put the peas out each morning to harden off and take them in at night. Next week, if the weather is still fine, they will get planted out. I just use a hoe to make a channel in the soil and then slide the peas in. For succession sowing I immediately refill the guttering and sow again. After doing that perhaps four times, I'll switch to direct sowing the peas. For whatever reason the mice don't seem to target the later sowings.

Friend or Foe?

This little fella has started getting quite tame and is now posing for photos. I'm not sure what kind of mouse he is - perhaps you can enlighten me? I know not everybody likes to have mice or rats or other wildlife in the vegetable garden but my allotment is also an animal sanctuary.

I don't think you need to wage war on nature to grow good veg. Mice usually only cause trouble when they start digging up peas, beans or sweetcorn as they emerge. I personally have only had trouble with the peas and then I use decoy feeding to protect the plants. A generous helping of wheat scattered nearby is enough to distract them. Within a week or two the peas are too big to interest the mice and then I stop feeding them. The early peas get extra protection by starting them off in the greenhouse in a piece of guttering, but I'll show you that in a month or so.