I love sweet potatoes in all their delicious incarnations: baked, boiled, roasted wedges, pie, curry, bread, gnocchi...you name it, I have tried it. Last year my heart was a bit broken over the sweet potato harvest. Sweet potato vines truly sprawl all over and take up a lot of room. And they will do this even if voles have eaten half of the sweet potatoes from underneath. This is exactly what happened last year. Despite my lining the base of each garden bed with fine garden cloth, the voles found a way in. This year that bed is the tomato bed and each tomato is planted in its own individual cage, after trying to figure out how the voles got in the bed and stop them!
Because of the problem with sweet potatoes sprawling everywhere, I am trying something new this year, that is planting them in garden bags. These bags are about 25 gallons each and are filled with a combination of potting mix, coir, coffee chaff, and compost. I know people have grown white potatoes in these kinds of bags before, as well as other garden crops. I did some reading and found that it is possible to grow sweet potatoes in them, though I have no idea what the yield would be like. Stay tuned for an update when we get closer to October!
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