Sweet Potatoes - No Repeating This Garden Experiment

Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.

William Shakespeare, from The Taming of the Shrew

Sweet potato blooms

This was the year to try sweet potatoes. Friends seem to have luck with them and I know they are ridiculously good for you. The extra "slip" a friend shared with me was duly planted in a large container and it quickly sent out vining branches. 

The blooms were beautiful and disclosed that sweet potatoes are in the same family as morning glories, tievines, and bindweed.* I was careful not to let the vines overrun the garden as I waited the 100 to 140 days until harvest.

Should I say that sweet potatoes have never been a "go to vegetable" for me? I know they are ridiculously good for you, though. 

Today was the day. 

This has been the year of the paper wasp. I've had them build 4 nests in the tomatoes, two in the okra, and this one on the edge of the sweet potato pot. I've also found them in other locations - delaying weeding. Only stung when harvesting tomatoes. Creepy things.*

See how well the little jerks hid? I only saw them because they had started moving on the nest.

These days I add "Dawn Powerwash" to home remedy insect sprays.

This is my weed killer. It was handily in a spray bottle. I just added the Dawn.

Multiple "sick" wasps tried to escape. I ruthlessly hunted them down.

Before I could start I had to remove the wasp nest on the edge of the pot. A few stragglers were removed before I could tump the pot over onto a throw cloth. At that point I observed that ants had nested in the bottom of the pot. I would have to proceed slowly and carefully (with a trowel and gloves).

I saw this tuber at the bottom of the pot and though "GREAT! I'm going to have a good harvest!"

But as I started digging, I found few potatoes of any size.

And here's the entire harvest...not much to show for a significant amount of soil, water, fertilizer, and time.

This was the first paper bag I found. I thought it was funny. They are the wrong kind of potato for Dunnes (the Walmart of Ireland).

Inside the bag. I think I have to wait a week or two until they "cure" before eating. Apparently the sugars develope during that time.

I pulled a number of skinny "potatoes" out of the soil and a few crazily twisted tubers. Then I secured the potatoes in a Dunnes Store bag to keep them out of the sun. I'll brush the soil off more tomorrow and then find a cool dark place for them for a week or so. 

We will see how they taste before I decide whether to try them again, but right now the negatives outweigh the positives for me:

Negatives                                Positives

- long growing time                  - healthy vegetable

- lots of watering                      - easy to grow, I guess

- ants and wasps                     - flowers encourage pollinators

Now I get to deal with the spent soil. I usually put it in a large pot and fertilize it, but I am afraid there will be trouble with the ants, so we shall see how this goes. I've darn-well decided I need to just purchase my sweet potatoes at the store.

NOTES

* Some of these are "devil" plants - taking over everything. Check out   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato  or  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolvulaceae

** I've also had red wasps in multiple locations (IN MY FIG TREE!). I keep wondering if it was the wet spring. I'm blaming everything that's gone wrong in the garden this year on the wet spring.