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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] holding sweet potato slips

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] holding sweet potato slips
  • Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 19:24:19 -0400


On May 14, 2010, at 6:15 PM, Beth Spaugh wrote:

I find that if I use drip tape right by the plants, I get a wonderfully easy to harvest "hand" of sweet potatoes. Basically, the stem is the wrist and there are 4 to 8 good size sweet poatoes pointing down like fingers.  If they are running off sideways, they are probably looking for water.  Last year I put them under plastic and thought with the very ample rain we had that there was plenty of moisture so didn't turn the drip on them.  I had long thin potatoes running horizontally along the edge of the plastic.
 

Thanks Beth!

I was thinking that mine usually grow right under the plant like that and wondering what the difference was between mine and Rob's -- mine are usually also Georgia Jet (and often also from Mapple). I bet it is the drip tape; I grow mine in plastic mulch also, with drip tape under the plastic, and it does generally get turned on at least occasionally especially as they're in the same general irrigation zone with the tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers; I do sometimes turn that particular line off if I'm short on water as I was under the impression that sweet potatoes don't need as much water as tomatoes etc. do. But I'll try to remember that if it's dry enough to irrigate at all I should give the sweet potatoes a good deep one occasionally so they'll stay aiming down under the plants.

Of course if they go too deep they provide a different type of digging challenge . . .


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale






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