This weekend I'm going to pull up some Sweet Potato vines. I've been bandicooting the occasional sweet potatoes since mid-March because I just couldn't wait but now is the time to get a full harvest happening, at least of the earliest planted crops. I'm going to leave quite a few vines in until May or even June just to see the plants go in the colder weather and to see how much the tubers grow, if at all, going into colder days and nights. The photos below show how the Sweet Potato plants have grown over the course of summer and autumn, from early December until now.
We've had proper rain here for the last few days, the first consistent downfalls for four months. It's been less "rain" than constant drizzle, bringing over 30mm over three or four days which sounds pathetic if you come from anywhere really wet, or even from what seems like a long-lost Melbourne but it's been great. It's also been mild still as well, like being in a cool tropical high altitude world stuck at around 18 or 19 degrees all day, like Bogota (as I imagine it!).
Hello Chris, I was at you talk at Burnley Open Day 2013. I took a NZ yam tuber and it is in a pot with foliage 60 cm tall in a cage to stop possum destruction. When do I pick the tubers?
ReplyDeleteAlso I have sweet potatoes at my community plot, going crazy growth wise, late start after xmas, hoping to pick some good size tubers. thanks for the blog ( first visit since open day!)
Hi Adrian, good to hear from you. The NZ yam tubers are still too small to harvest - wait until mid-May through to late June. Don't forget that you can push up some soil around the stems of the NZ Yams and tubers will form in this ''mound'' as well. I pulled a great haul of sweet potatoes today from a plant that went in around December 1. My late planted sweet potatoes are doing well I am going to leave them another 2-3 weeks with all this lovely mild weather. If you scratch around the main stem of your plant you should be able to see sweet potatoes swelling up the from the soil. If so you might be able to ''bandicoot'' one now and have a main harvest in a couple of weeks time, cheers Chris
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