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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Sweet Potato Spinach?

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  • From: rrandall1 <rrandall1@houston.rr.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Sweet Potato Spinach?
  • Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:25:23 -0600

Blackberry muscadine stacks are a stacking technique I use to get the most food production out of my 1/3 Acre urban "farm". Essentially it is based on the idea that domestic blackberries like Kiowa produce very well here in May even if somewhat shaded in late summer, that Southern improved muscadines like Darlene or Fry or Ison are very late to leaf out and fruit in August, and that sweet potato spinach is planted/emerges in May and covers the ground. Probably any blackberry and grape combination would work for this.

I trellis the muscadines about 7-10 feet off the ground by stringing a wire between two tall durable posts spaced about 10 ft. The trunk of the muscadine is trained initially on a string or wire about 5 ft from either post and then T-ed at the top. The blackberries are grown at the posts and tied loosely to the posts with cord or wire so they won't fall all over the place with their thorns. They are topped at 4-5 ft. The ground is then planted with sweet potato spinach or any other soil suitable edible leaf or green manure crop. My posts are steel U stakes pounded into the ground and bolted together to get height. In this humid tropical climate, they last decades. However, there are obviously more self-sufficient timbers potentially feasible especially in colder drier places with ample room to grow things.

Bob Randall


On Nov 5, 2006, at 8:18 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

rrandall1 wrote:

Actually, sweet potato spinach is a distinct variety of sweet
potato. The tuber is white starchy, is small, root like, and looks
inedible. The leaves though taste like and look like the tuber
varieties. What makes this variety standout is that it does very well
here in clay soils as an understory plant below persimmons, or
blackberry muscadine stacks.

Could you explain "blackberry muscadine stacks"?

Conventional sweet potatoes have trouble with tight soils and
certainly don't produce tubers easily in such conditions. I need to
put them in a foot of good soil. Additionally, conventional ones lose
tuber production if you grow them for leaves.

We got our start from the Chinese Organic Gardening Club here in
Houston. See page 550 in Cornucopia II.

Our sweet potato spinach comes back easily in the spring here in zone
9 or (Global Warming 10).

--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
Venaura Farm
lfl@intrex.net
info@market-farming.com
IM: lawrence.london@pandion.be & lfl@amber.org.uk
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