If There's A Famine, We Will Have Sweet Potatoes

This is what I get for trying to vlog and drive. All my sweet potatoes are now on the floor. Luckily I think everything is okay. I just had four varieties that are now all messed up. So there's that. Luckily there are two that I will know the difference of. This is a white variety called O'Henry and this is an orange variety called Diane I believe and it has different leaves, see? Anyway I'm planting sweet potatoes today come hell or high water or falling off of the four wheeler. I'm trying to be cool and it failed. Okay it's actually not as bad as I thought because this was a mixed tray but the other one that got dumped was, it does have a tag in it, but even if it didn't this is a purple sweet potato variety and you can tell because it's got like purple streaking on its stem but also fun. The roots, if you can see the purple tinge on it. So okay no harm no foul nothing is broken they're just all a little bit flustered as am I but I'm gonna finish going to the garden without trying to video it just for everyone's safety here. Okay I am ready to plant sweet potatoes although my soil might still be a little bit cold. Sweet potatoes are actually a tropical plant. All my Australian friends and I say friends very loosely it's just the people that I see on the internet, they all grow sweet potato as like a perennial ground cover in places that don't frost. I guess in my own country that would be like Southern California or Florida or all of these things. Sweet potatoes to me are a great crop. They're very easy to grow, very hands-off, they last all winter in storage. They store much better in my experience than a regular like white potato and on top of being an excellent storage crop you can actually eat the greens. So I actually want to do that this year every year I mean to and I just never get around to it but greens are actually really hard to get to grow well in summer heat without a lot of intervention and I don't want to do a lot of intervention but I'm going to concentrate this year a lot on like storing crops like growing things to eat during the winter because I find that one I hate the grocery store, I hate going grocery shopping. For two the food is just subpar, all the food that I grow is so much better and I'm spoiled and I want to eat as much as I can of my own food all year long. So this year I will be growing tons of like beans to can, beans to dry, potatoes of all kinds, sweet and white like regular potatoes, winter squashes, carrots, am I forgetting things? Anyway, I'm just going to focus this year on putting a lot up into my pantry because I like it. So first on the list, I only have one row done, believe it or not covering this garden in wood chips and cardboard takes a really long time, way longer than I thought that it would be but I'm excited for this variety. I'm growing like five different sweet potato varieties this year. I have, I always grow Beauregard, that's like the classic orange sweet potato and I'm still going to grow it but I didn't start them soon enough. I have some slips that I can plan out but then I panic bought all of these. I'm not affiliated with this at all, I just like them. I've ordered from them a couple years now and they've been great. It's called George's Plant Farm but I'm pretty sure the website is like taterman.com which I enjoy thoroughly. But they have so many varieties, fun varieties and I am just here to have fun, you know, so why grow orange when you can grow. So I have a couple different new varieties of orange sweet potatoes, a white sweet potato and a couple different varieties of purple sweet potatoes because I watched that Netflix series, The Blue Zones and the Japanese people love their purple sweet potatoes and I want to too. Plus they're full of anthocyanin which is an antioxidant so they have different vitamin levels in them. But basically when these slips came they were just like bare root slips and so I stuck them in all of these pots so that they can root a little farther because I ordered them early and I wasn't ready to plant them out. But now they have a good root system. I think the problem with sweet potato slips in the past is that I get them in the mail and then I directly plant them out and I don't baby anything and I usually don't have my irrigation set up by then and so they just don't get enough water. And so they struggle a little bit but since I got these early and I got them rooted nicely I'm pretty confident that these are going to be great. Now I'm just going to plant these about 18 inches apart in a row and I'm going to do a double row so I'm going to plant on the other side as well. And if you are the kind of person that's super planny and you like to plan your garden and you like to plan for how much exactly you need and not just go overboard with everything like I do, sweet potatoes are really easy to figure out how much you need to plant because they usually make like four to six potatoes per plant. So it's really easy. Say you wanted 100 then you would plant 25. I have 200 here so I'm going to have a lot of sweet potatoes hopefully this fall. Okay I'm going to get to planting these down the row and I'll catch up with you in a little bit. Look it's making little baby sweet potatoes already. Isn't that so cute? Look at it. I have one row planted. It's always funny to me that I think that a job is going to take 30 minutes, 45 minutes. It never does. I've been out here for two and a half hours. But I got one row completely done with three different varieties. Now I do have extra. I probably have a hundred left over because I panic bought and I always panic buy in bulk. Why not? And I think I'm going to put the extra on the swale and use it as ground cover because why not? Well I was just doing stuff and I thought that I was recording and I definitely wasn't recording. But I'm over here on swale two we'll call it. It's the second swale off of the main pond and it really doesn't have much planted in it yet. I haven't cover cropped. I plan on cover cropping all the swale so that the soil isn't just laying bare. But I haven't gotten around to it yet. So I figured it would appreciate some ground cover and that I'm going to take away in the fall. And it can grow me something while it adjusts to its new life here as a swale. So I'm planting the rest of these purple passion sweet potato slips. And also another variety that's new to me is an orange variety called Carolina Ruby. I'm excited to be trying all of these new sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are really one of my favorite winter. I associate that with like wintertime food. Just because you know we eat a lot of them in the winter when there's not much fresh. And you can eat them all kinds of ways. You can make them sweet like with cinnamon and maple syrup. Or they can be savory which is my personal favorite. With you know butter, garlic powder, roasted in the oven. That's my preferred way. But I am just excited to honestly check this task off my to-do list. Because it's been looking at me for like a couple weeks now. And it feels good to accomplish things. Sweet potato 2025 completed. I think that there I planted around 250 sweet potato plants with no intention of selling any. So I'm not sure if that's crazy or smart. But if there is a famine we will have sweet potatoes. It's a little later in the day now. Gone a couple rounds with the weed eater. I'm covered in grass and thistles. But there are things that need to be done. Because I didn't get out here to pick strawberries yesterday. And I need to get them before one, the birds do. And two, before they go bad. Because I've got strawberry dreams people. I haven't made a single jar of anything yet. I have not had the time. But they're waiting in the freezer for me whenever I find it. I don't know if I'll ever find the time. Maybe when I'm canning. I'll wrap that into my to-do. But for right now we're just eating and eating and eating and eating and eating and eating and eating strawberries. And slicing and freezing the rest. And sharing with neighbors. The old strawberry is almost done. But it's lasted a lot longer than I thought it would to be honest with you. So I really have a headache. And no part of me wants to be bending over picking these. But I have to remind myself sometimes that like this is what I cried about in January. So you can't cry about it now too.