Sweet Potatoes in mid January following record heatwave.

1. Three purple sweet potatoes , just planted into pea straw early December 2013

2. Christmas time

3. Purple Sweet Potatoes January 19 2014

4. Beautiful, lush and tasty foliage on Purple Sweet Potato

5.

6. Mystery variety

7. Mystery variety up-close

8. Beauregards just planted (behind the clothes horse) in early December. Blue the Dog sniffing for rats under the house.

9. Beauregards January 19 2014

10. Beauregards in mid-summer

11.Beauregards

This year I have around 20 sweet potato plants in - four purple ones, two of a variety unknown and 14 orange Beauregards. These have all been growing well and went bananas during last week's heatwave. Melbourne had four days in a row over 40 degrees celcius, or 104 Fahrenheit + , namely 43, 42, 44 and 44. At night the temperature stayed in the mid to high twenties. Quite a few plants in my garden were scorched including my favourite the Abyssinian Banana which finds itself fried at least twice a year, either by frost or extreme heat. (It always bounces back though.) Anyway, as I was saying the Sweet Potatoes put on strong growth during the heatwave even though I'm sure no plants really like 44 degrees. The purple sweet potato is from cuttings I took from Karen Sutherland of Edible Eden design last winter (see http://edibleedendesign.com/blog/ )while the Beauregards are from my own stock. The mystery variety is from slips sold as leafy greens at the Preston Market. The photos below show various stages of growth over the last 6-8 weeks. I think the mystery variety may turn out to be the white skinned but purple inside type sold at the Preston Market and elsewhere.