Garden update

I dug the sweet potatoes today. The nights have been getting cooler lately and it is supposed to rain tomorrow, so it was time. Unfortunately the sweet potatoes didn't seem to do as well this year as last year. Last year we had some gigantic sweets. This year, the biggest ones were about 4.5 oz. (vs almost 2 lbs last year). Our entire harvest this year was only about 4.5 pounds.

We thought about harvesting the sweet potatoes a few weeks ago, but I'm sure they would have been even smaller then. And I just checked - this years harvest is one week later than last year, but last year we had already turned on the heat by then. This year we haven't yet, we've only had one night barely dip into the upper 30's.

I'm not sure why they did so much worse this year. Perhaps because I planted them in-between rows of green beans and they got robbed of sun or water or soil nutrients? I had planted the beans well before the sweet potatoes would be ready to go in, but then my first planting didn't germinate, so I was 2 weeks later. And then the beans just kept on producing, so I didn't pull them out as soon as I had anticipated. I'd been trying for a bit of the square foot gardening/interplanting techniques and making better use of my space, but if that caused my poor yields, I'm not sure its worth it. Alternately it could be that we went on vacation for 2 weeks and the garden didn't get watered as regularly. or just the vagaries of weather. I wish I knew....

The hot peppers and the cherry tomatoes are still plowing on full steam ahead. I picked 8-10 cherry tomatoes today and there must still be dozens on the plant. Last week, one branch of the cherry tomato plant broke off (with a half dozen green to slightly red tomatoes on it), so I brought it home and put it in a vase of water. The reddish ones have fully ripened now, and most of the others are turning red - just one resolutely green tomato.

I'll have to try to add pictures tomorrow...