Saturday, January 12, 2013

Harvesting Sweet Potatoes like Pulling in Netted Fish!


Community Garden Harvest

I harvested more than 20-pounds of sweet potatoes today. This is my first try at sweet potatoes so I was very surprised to see how much was underground when I pulled up the vines, it was like pulling in a net that was cast out to catch fish (we used to help my dad back in Hawaii when he would cast net fishing.) Many of the potatoes came up with the vines and the rest were like presents, jewels hiding under the soil - so much fun.

God's Provision

I kept thinking how awesome it is that God created this thing called planting or sowing seeds were we would place small seeds or spouts of plants into the ground - after watering and weeding, sometimes feeding it with fertilizer - then poof a few months later we have huge ground roots that we can cook and eat. Our God is so awesome the way He provides.

Where are Community Gardens?

At work we're fortunate to have a community garden, I don't know how big each plot is but I'm down to one plot which is easier to manage. I used to have about four plots but then my family gave up on helping and I ended up doing all the weeding, watering and maintaining that it just became too much. The garden doesn't do that well in the summer. I planted a few plants this past summer to cover half the plot cause I got tired of weeding and someone said that sweet potato plants are great ground covers to control weeds and didn't need much attention if we weren't planting this summer or were going away it didn't need much water, they were right! The plants were going great until one day, we had near freezing weather which killed most of the plant leaves.

I was going to leave the dead and live potato vines on the top soil but then decided to plant some other plants with hopes of a variety of veggies for Spring. I then buried the smaller potatoes with hopes that they will sprout for this coming summer, as it's a great ground cover to keep the weeds down when I won't be able to cater to the garden during the hot summer.

I've grown red potatoes which don't take much top soil space, everything is underground and I hope to plant it again. I just love growing potatoes!

Now I'll need to sort through sweet potato recipes and I'll post what I create soon. Since there's so many I will give most away and just finished washing two huge bags!

Check out more food articles, recipes, photos and stories on: Orlando Cooking Examiner

Copyright 2013 mLehua

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