Skip a couple of months to November of 2014.  Time to pick the taters.

In the middle row, in the most forward of the three beds, I planted sweet potatoes.  I had two slips that I grew out and an actual potato that I let grow roots.  These were planted back in late June of 2014.  I wasn’t too sure how well they would turn out as this was my first intentional attempt at a food crop.

This is when I knew they were ready.  I left the tubers in the ground for a little bit longer than I read.  Apparently they are ready for harvest after 100 days, but I chose to leave them in the ground for around 130 days.  Remember that I stopped watering them back in August.  They developed a root system that tapped into the wood core and drew upon that moisture.  They survived a Texas summer and set some ready beautiful purple flowers in September.

One of the slips with my finger for reference.  Now I don’t have fat fingers, but I had a healthy happy and fat sweet potato slip.  I wasn’t too sure what to expect to find underground.  Much to my surprise I had earthworms and lots of tubers!

You can see the old potato I planted at the top left.  There is still greens attached to the top. We put these to good use and we made an amazing sweet potato pie out of them.  The smaller tubers were a little fibrous, but we made due and unfortunately the pie was finished off before I could snap a photo.