Last year's garden boxes yielded an impressive harvest of sweet potatoes.
Considered a "super food", this yummy root packed with beta carotene
is one of my family's favorites.
This is just a small sampling of our yield.
Planting our garden above ground in boxes gave us the best
harvest we have ever had.
I planted sweet potatoes in each box...
between the other vegetables.
While the other veggies were flourishing above ground,
the sweet potatoes were growing big and nutritious below.
A large harvest left me with the problem of how to preserve these
nutritious spuds.
Because we don't have a root cellar, per se,
I had to come up with another idea.
Follow me downstairs to our basement...
When we built our home,
we kept a small room in one corner to use as excess
pantry storage.
We left the heat ducts out of this room, so that it would
maintain a constant temperature in the 50's.
It is here that we have our freezers,
and our home-canned goods, along with other
grocery items.
Our frozen and preserved vegetables have gotten us through the winter.
The sweet potatoes I washed, dried and packed in plastic totes
filled with clean fresh pine bedding.
I placed each layer of potatoes in the bin
so that they would not touch each other.
Then I covered them with more bedding
so that none were exposed to the air.
We have eaten them all winter long.
5 months after I dug them up
they still look as good as the day they were harvested...
free from decay; and no eyes have formed.
This idea has been a winner for us.
I plan to do the same this summer.
Oh, and how excited I am for gardening season,
aren't you?
Comments
They were really full boxes and the vines would have gotten no sunlight......but in all the other boxes I stuck a few plants. The sweet potato vines cascaded down the sides of the boxes, while the spuds were happily growing beneath the soil.
I am afraid I might have to turn in my farm girl badge. :( Have a wonderful day.
What I found is this. You can make pretty good use of space if you think outside the box. Anything that can possibly climb needs to go up....trellis, or some sort of frame to climb on increases the amount you can get in the bed. Other vining plants such as squash only need enough room for the plant at the ground...the rest can trail out of the box. I over planted my peppers and tomatoes and could have had a better yield if I had spaced them out. This year I will plant tomatoes and peppers in each box and plant smaller things around their base....instead of a box stuffed full of tomatoes or peppers. This has been a learning process for me....each year I learn a little more what works and what doesn't.
Thanks for sharing!
~ Tracy
Blessings
Diane
Also, I noticed your picture of the Susquehanna River. We have one of those. My hubby is a construction manager who oversaw the renovations at the Harrisburg Hotel years ago. There happened to be an extra print so he was able to keep it. We keep ours in the basement as well- in storage!
Tammy