Good morning, this year has been an odd year to say the least but all the oddity has not been all bad. There have been some pleasant surprises too.
I have grown sweet potatoes for several years and a few years back I contracted a fungus called scurf. As far as sell ability goes, the sweets that contract this fungus are perfectly sell able. This fungus does not effect flavor just the appearance. It gives them a rough russet look. Not an appearance that most folks are used to seeing in sweet potatoes and thus are picked over. There also is another down side to this russet. it severely effects the store ability of the sweets. For example we had a few of our fingerling sweets that had been "lost" . They were found in mid July. These had blemish free skins and these fingerlings were in pristine shape. The last of my last years sweets were harvested around the first of October (roughly 10 months of storage). On the other hand the russet enhances the moisture loss through the skin. Fingerlings do not store well and the larger sweets last only a month or two. This russet was increasingly effecting the sweet harvest garden wide.
This year two things changed: first I soaked the sweet sets in Actinovate (an organic fungicide) before I planted them and I have been administering a thyme oil solution that has helped with my root knot nematodes but is also a fungicide. This product is called Promax and I have found it also enhances growth and production numbers garden wide.
The use of both of these products has completely eliminated the russet (so far) from my sweet harvest. So far ALL of the tubers have been a pretty pink color. The most severe RKN effected have the nematode induced cracking but the rest of the tuber has good color. By and large the tubers have been larger with fewer fingerlings. I feel the harvest is going very well. Even with selling them at market and with 1 and 3/4 beds harvested there is over 250 pounds in storage (2 beds to go). It will be interesting to see if my earlier fingerling discovery was a fluke or that I may have sweet potatoes nearly year round. This amazes me!!
The other surprise is with my Irish potatoes. Normally I could only grow a few spuds that are 4 or 5 ounces and occasionally one that was 8 ounces. This year there were quite a number that were 8 ounces and a few that were 15 ounces or better. There are not a lot of spuds per plant but the weight is up. Previous years I have gotten 2 pounds or less (mostly less) per plant. with the use of promax I have harvested the first crop (around 20 pounds) and second crop of volunteers that are just now blooming and will be harvested when they die. I had some seed potatoes that were sprouting so I decided this week to see If there is enough time to get another crop of potatoes before winter. Most of my potatoes are early potatoes (60 to 90 days). Unless we get a sneaker of a freeze,on paper it looks like it is doable.
Potatoes are grown as a commercial crop in the state so I do not see why I shouldn't be able to get sell able quantities of decent 6 to 8 ounce spuds..I suspect that the larger potatoes would be like any of the other extra large veggie at market, there is little interest in them. The only exception is around the Holidays when folks have guests or family over for dinner, this is when there are sales of the larger sweets and butternut squash.
So like I said it has been an interesting year with surprises both bitter and sweet.
This week I harvested chard, green onions, carrots, lettuce,beets, chilies, eggplants, summer squash, cucumbers, and in storage sweets, bulb onions, garlic and butternuts. Please email as to availability.
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