This is a great time of the year for gardeners; when the weather starts cooling off a bit, the garden starts getting smaller and the workload gets lighter.
Also, some of the vegetables that have longer maturity times start getting ready, like sweet potatoes. I recently had several questions about sweet potatoes.
Although sweet potatoes do not have many problems, I did have a slight scare a couple of months ago when my cat brought in a vole. I once had my entire crop destroyed by those little varmints, so I get a little concerned when I see one.
If you are not familiar with voles, also commonly called meadow mice, they are chunky, ground dwelling rodents about 7 inches long with a short tail not more than an inch or so long. Young voles are gray. Adults are brown mixed with black and have underparts of gray tinged with yellow. Furry black ears do not rise much above the fur, and the eyes are black and beady. There are several species of voles, including the woodland vole, meadow vole and prairie vole.
In Missouri, chances are you will be dealing with the prairie vole. They especially like tubers, so be on the lookout for them.
Back to the sweet potatoes. One hundred plus days of secrecy, that's what it feels like to me. Although the sweet potato vines are a pleasant sight in the garden, the actual work is done underground where you cannot see them. I will admit I carefully dig around and take a peek every now and then. Although it is recommended you wait till the leaves start turning yellow, you can harvest them between three and four months after planting the slips. They just might not be as sweet at that stage.
Flavor and quality improves with colder weather, and some people even wait until after the first frost has blackened the leaves, but do that only if you can get all of your sweet potatoes out of the ground quickly. Once those vines are blackened with frost bite, the sweet potatoes need to be harvested right away. If you can't harvest them right away, cut the dead vines off at the ground so the decay doesn't pass to the tubers below. This will buy you a few more days for harvesting sweet potatoes, but don't put it off too long.
The most common tool for digging sweet potatoes out of the ground is a spade fork. Sweet potatoes have delicate skin that is easily bruised or broken. Be sure you sink your garden fork far enough out from the plants to avoid striking the tender roots and deep enough to get under them. Tubers can grow a foot or more away from the plant, so give ample space to prevent nicking and damaging the skin, as this encourages spoilage.
I loosen them from both sides before lifting the potatoes out with the fork. Digging is much easier when the soil is dry, and mud-coated sweet potatoes are less likely to sun dry properly and rapidly.
Dry your harvest in the sun for a few hours. After they have a couple of hours drying in the sun, it is recommended to move them to a "curing room," ideally between 85-90 degrees Fahrenheit at around 85 percent humidity for a week to 10 days. I don't have a place like that, so I usually put them in our breezeway for a week or so, then move them into the basement.
If you are able to cure them in a curing room, they say they are sweeter and store longer.
Now it is time to start looking up sweet potato recipes. If the harvest was anything like past years, we'll probably need a book of recipes.
Peter Sutter is a lifelong gardening enthusiast and a participant in the MU Extension's Callaway County Master Gardener program. Gardening questions can be sent to [email protected].