A Sweet Potato A Day....

Did you know that right now is a great time to enjoy sweet potatoes?  Our sweet potatoes are at their height of sweetness and have been perfectly cured to maintain freshness and quality.

After curing these Beauregard beauties in the sun for ten days, we store them in burlap sacks with straw in a cool dry place.  While tucked away in their cozy sleeping bags during the cold winter months, the starches are converted into sugar.  This is why they are so very sweet.  When baked, the texture is smooth, creamy, and rich -- no butter needed!  In fact, I can't even remember the last time I buttered one of our sweet potatoes.

Yes, the flavor is out of this world, but sweet potatoes are also incredibly healthy.  They're loaded with antioxidants, anti-inflammatory nutrients, vitamins A and C, calcium, and potassium.  These tasty tubers are an excellent choice for diabetics as they rank low on the glycemic index and effect blood glucose levels less than white potatoes.

So, eat up!

You can find us at the Cobblestone Farmers Market with our sweet potatoes this Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.  The market will be located in front of the Milton Rhodes Arts Center in Winston-Salem, NC this week.

The Big Dig

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate in the big sweet potato dig this year, as I was recovering from a nasty run-in with a black widow.  On the upside, I can finally spin webs!  So, it was left completely up to my dear Ben to unearth each and every one of the sweet potatoes that grew from the 200 slips we planted in the spring.  He is truly a good guy.


Yes, there are potatoes in all of those bins!

By the time the ginger in the greenhouse was ready to harvest, I had fully recovered.  It was a very aromatic experience.

Benjamin with our prized ginger root

Ginger tops in the greenhouse

Home-brewed pumpkin ginger beer this fall?  I think so!

If We're Gonna Starve, It Won't Be This Year

Summer has been good to us.  We dug up our sweet potatoes a little over a week ago, and it was a chore.  We had planted 200 slips, and I do believe that each and every one of them put out.

The Queen Mother (I mean the potato).

I didn't expect such an early harvest, but they were ready, indeed.  Ben had seen one poking up out of the dirt, and that was that.  I prefer them on the smaller side for baking whole, and the majority of them were just so.  However, we did have quite a few giants.  The one pictured above was the biggest.  Potatoes that size will be chopped up into fries for used in roasted root vegetable mixes.

The potatoes were cured under the carport for ten days.  During the curing process, starch is converted into sugar, and the result is a sweeter, creamier potato.  Now they're waiting in the basement for me to very gently wipe away the dirt.  Ben is building a few storage bins for them.  The bin we used last year just won't do.  We planted twice as many slips this year as we did last year, but we got about five times the potatoes.  The deer and a late frost did a number on them in 2010.  I estimate this harvest at about 1,000 taters.

Thurgood Morsel says, "I'll have mine baked and cut down the middle lengthwise with a farm fresh egg cracked on top, please."

He also says, "Get out mah face wit dat camera.  Cain't you see I'm nappin'?  Stupid biotch."

Drowning in Asparagus and Loving It!

The 2010 asparagus is enormous.   I guess we have the manure to thank for that.  It's taller than me and has beautiful, thick stalks.  I'm so excited about the first harvest next year!

The 2011 asparagus is growing strong.  It won't be harvested until 2013.  I still have to finish mulching between the rows, and I have a lot of weeding to do in there.

Also growing in the asparagus field, we have our sweet potatoes.  I put in 200 slips, and they look great so far.  Sweet potatoes are a staple in this house, and harvest day is a true celebration.  So, we're impatiently waiting for October to come.

 The top of the row is freshly mulched.

I mulched the bottom of the row weeks ago.

We'll store the roots in the basement.  They did very well in there last year.  We only planted 100 slips last year, and we ran out of potatoes several months ago.  I hope 200 will be enough.  If not, we'll go for 300 next spring. We are so fortunate to have the space to accommodate our obsession.

Sweet Potatoes and a Lizard

It has been raining almost everyday for over a week now.  The weather has severly limited any possibilities of working in the garden.  The weeds are growing ever taller, and the grass is out of control.  At least I don't have to water anything.

 My sweet potato row

I lucked out last week and was able to get the sweet potatoes planted and mulched.  I planted 200 Beauregard slips that we ordered from Johnny's.  We are addicted to sweet potatoes in this house, and they're Thurgood's favorite.  He knows from the moment I put a raw sweet potato in the oven that he'll be getting the skin later that evening.

I found this lizard under the mailbox.  He was so well-camouflaged that I almost picked him up while I was weeding.  We have a ton of five-lined skinks out here, but I haven't seen these guys before.