I planted rhubarb in a couple of these tubs and filled the rest of them with strawberry plants and sweet potato slips. Several of the strawberry plants died, probably because it was so hot this summer and the fact that the tubs are made of black plastic which absorbed the heat and made matters worse. Next year, I will move the ones containing strawberries to where they receive more shade.
The sweet potatoes, however, loved the heat and did great! I was pretty sure we were going to get some nice sweet potatoes when a few weeks ago I looked under the leaves of one of the plants to see this!
Today, we finally had time to harvest them. It was much easier to dig them out of these tubs than in the past when we planted them in the garden. Plus, there were no weeds and the deer didn't eat all the leaves. Sweet potato leaves are deer candy. They love them.
Having been planted in potting soil, the vines were easy to pull up.
We started out using a spading fork to dig the potatoes up, but eventually found that it was just as easy to dig them with our hands. We found some very large potatoes, like this one.
In the end, we had a really good harvest of sweet potatoes of all different sizes.
I always enjoy digging root vegetables. It is like digging for buried treasure because you never know what you will find. Like today, we found a sweet potato "braid". Isn't that awesome!
I can't wait to cook some of these. I am wondering if the monster potato will be too tough and fibrous to even be edible. I will have to wait a couple of weeks to find out. The sweet potatoes have to cure for a few days before they are ready to eat. So, for now, they are spread out on the shelves in the greenhouse.
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