Planting our Potatoes

What we did last week was we planted some Potatoes right around our lettuce. The potatoes are going to grow during the summer and are going to be ready around next October. We learned how healthy sweet potatoes are and how much nutrients are in them.

by Zach

Sweet Potatoes

Why you absolutely have to grow sweet potatoes!

Growing Sweet Potatoes is very easy in tropical and sub tropical climates. (And not difficult in cool climates, either.)

In fact, the question is not how to grow sweet potatoes, it's rather how to stop sweet potato vines from taking over the whole garden! Sweet potatoes are vigorous growing vines and will take over if you let them!

Sweet potato is one of the most useful food plants in a warm climate:

      Sweet potatoes are the perfect substitutefor normal potatoes.

      Sweet potatoes have less disease problems.

      Growing sweet potato vines is much easierthan growing other potatoes.                    Sweet potatoes are very nutritious.                                                 

And sweet potatoes grow with little water and fertilizer.

      You can use sweet potatoes in the kitchen just like you would use potatoes. Boil them, steam them, mash them, fry them... But sweet potatoes have more uses:

        Young sweet potato shoots and leaves are yummy in stir fries and salads.

        Sweet potatoes also make a wonderful quick growing ground cover.                         You can use them as a living mulch and to keep weeds down.

So, how do you grow sweet potatoes?

How To Grow Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potato plants are fast growing vines that cover the ground. Originally they come from Central and South America, which means they area warm weather vegetable. You need a long warm season to grow good sweet potatoes.

There are sweet potato varieties with red, yellow and white tubers. The red ones have the highest vitamin A content, and have become the most popular variety. But all sweet potatoes are very nutritious in general, especially if you use the leaves and shoots, too. It would be hard to find a plant that produces more nutrition per square foot than the humble sweet potato!

Propagating Sweet Potatoes By Making "Slips"

The quickest and easiest way to grow sweet potatoes is to use cuttings or slips. Simply cut a piece of a runner, at least 6 inches long.

Remove all the leaves except for the tiny leaves at the very tip. Plant the cutting by covering the whole length with soil, only the leaves of the tip should stick out of the ground.

The cuttings will root at every leave node. Not just the leave nodes under the ground will root. A sweet potato also grows roots from every leave node that develops as your cutting grows.

Place them on the ground or in a bin, cover them with soil, and keep them moist. The tubers will develop shoots, called slips. Slips can be snipped or pulled off and planted out when they are about 6 -8 inches  in size. The original root will continue to produce more slips.

Planting Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes like growing in sandy soils, lots of sun, lots of space, and a reasonable amount of water and nutrients. They love heat. The hotter it is the faster they grow. While the best soil for sweet potatoes is sandy,  they can grow in all soils. If you have heavy soil plant sweet potatoes on mounds or ridges.

Sweet potatoes don't like heavy, waterlogged soils, cold weather, and fertilizers high in nitrogen (like chicken manure, it makes them grow lots of leaves but no potatoes). Raising the beds improves the drainage (very important) and gives the tubers a nice deep soil to develop in. (Otherwise you may end up with small, bent and forked sweet potatoes.)

The soil should have a good supply of nutrients, for example from digging in mature compost. Do not use fresh manures or any fertilizers high in nitrogen (like pelleted chicken manure). You'd just end up with plants and roots and no tubers (sweet potatoes).

Growing sweet potatoes requires some space, so plant them where they can spread. Space your cuttings or slips about a foot apart in a row, and leave three to four feet between rows. (If you plant in rows, that is...)

Mulch thickly between plants and even between the beds to intially keep the weeds down. Once the sweet potatoes grow they will choke all weeds down themselves.

For planting time the general recommendation is to plant a patch in late spring in our climate. Sweet potatoes do need four to six months of reasonably warm weather to mature.

How much water? How much plant food?

Although sweet potatoes are a very tropical vegetable they can get by with little water once established. However, the freshly planted cuttings need to be watered regularly.

Make sure plants don't become waterlogged. If your soil isn't free draining it's safest to grow sweet potatoes on mounds.

If you think the quality of your soil is not good enough fertilize your plants at planting time, at six weeks of age, and maybe once more at twelve weeks. Or whenever you remember to do it...

Just make sure you use a balanced fertilizer, for example seaweed extract. A sprinkle of sulfate of potash also doesn't go astray. Compost that had lots of wood ash in it is even better. Avoid high nitrogen fertilizers. Root crops like potassium and phosphorus, not nitrogen.

Harvesting sweet potatoes

After four to six months, depending on the temperatures, your sweet potatoes will be ready. You will see that the original stem of your cutting or slip will have thickened, and when you carefully lift the plant with a fork you should find two or three sweet potatoes at the base. You can harvest sweet potato leaves and young shoots at any time, it does not affect the plant or tubers.

No, this is not a Native American teepee

Last week Cooking in the Community practicum set up an addition to our garden! We added 5 bamboo sticks to create a trellis for our plants. The trellis is used for creating shape and structure to a plant that couldn't maintain the shape on the ground. With this we can grow tomatoes, herbs, and even things like flowers. This adds different levels to the garden so it gives it a little more appeal! Hopefully we start seeing some things growing soon!

                        ~alondra

A First Grade Class Tours Our Garden

New Life!

We planted lettuce seeds about 2 inches deep.  It took approximately 1 week after we planted this to see new life.  This is exciting! We got the seeds from Johnny's Seeds.

- Austin

How Does Your Garden Grow?

This is a baby cabbage starter plant that was donated to our practicum from Ace Hardware in Cornelius. They donated 2 flats of different types of lettuce.  We planted the plants by digging a 3-inch hole in the ground, then taking the plant out of its package and broke up the roots. Then we watered the plant. We also planted seeds as well as the starters. We will have to wait and see the plants!

Chefs Move to School Program

Friday's Reflection

Our Friday trip to the Bradford Store,

Learned about dirt and a whole lot more.

Microbes keep the dirt healthy, alive,

Makes you feel good don't need no pesticides.

"T" picked broccoli right off the plant, 

It tasted so good we bought more with our grant.

His food is organic and very nutritious,

Sucrose makes it sweeter and very yummalicious.

Uncle Scott's Root beer tastes amazing,

We shared it on the porch, just a lazin'.

Cows in the pasture, chickens in the pen,

Dogs free roamin' horses around the bend.

Sustainable gardening is our goal,

 To end world hunger and fill their bowl.

We made the Headlines!

Gardening class teaches farm-to-table lessons

Posted on 16 March 2011.

Executive Chef Bradley Labarre slices a plantain for students to taste. (Christina Ritchie Rogers / CorneliusNews.net)

By CHRISTINA RITCHIE ROGERS
CorneliusNews.net

DAVIDSON – Eighth graders in Community School of Davidson‘s cooking enrichment class have expanded their classroom to include an “edible garden” behind the school to grow lettuce, sweet potatoes, collard greens and other foods.

The students planned the garden as part of this semester’s practicum, a community-based enrichment class, which meets Fridays. And they’re working with a county dietitian as well as the chef from the Galway Hooker Pub.

“I actually didn’t expect to be doing gardening,” eighth-grader Hartley LeRoy said. He chose the practicum because he wanted to learn about cooking, he said, but has since discovered a true interest in and love for gardening. “I’d love to have a garden at home,” he said. “It brings the community together, and you can make great food.”

The school received a $500 UnitedHealth Heroes grant from Youth Services America (YSA) to start the garden.

LOCAL CHEF LENDS A HAND, AND UTENSILS

“It’s important that students this age make good choices in eating and preparation,” Mecklenburg County Health Department Dietitian Allison Mignery said. She works with the schools as part of “Chefs Move to Schools,” a health initiative run through the U.S. Department of Agriculture started by First Lady Michelle Obama. It calls on chefs across the country to get involved working with teachers, parents, school nutritionists and administrators to help educate children about nutrition.

Ms. Mignery facilitated a partnership between the Community School and Chef Bradley Labarre, executive chef at the Galway Hooker Pub in Cornelius. Chef Labarre visits the class once or twice a month and teaches the students the basics of cooking with healthy foods, like using olive oil instead of other oils because it has healthy omega 3 fats.

Eighth-grader Hartley LeRoy points to the newly-mulched garden beds outside Community School of Davidson in which students will plant vegetables. (Christina Ritchie Rogers / CorneliusNews.net)

Chef Labarre grew up in New Hampshire eating foods that were harvested and prepared locally, and is very excited to help students with the edible garden. He got involved with Chefs Move to Schools because he wanted to share his knowledge and his passion for healthy, seasonal food with students. “If the kids get educated, then so can the parents, and it goes from there,” Chef Labarre said.

In working with the students, Chef Labarre learned something about himself too. “I learned that I have more passion for this job and this industry than I even realized,” he said.

Even after working a full week, he still wakes up looking forward to going to school Friday mornings, Chef Labarre said. “Working in an intimate setting with the students, I get to really see the impact of what I’m doing,” he said. “I get to give back on a whole other level.”

The garden is tilled, mulched, and treated with an eco-friendly fertilizer, Hartley explained. Last week, students added a layer of topsoil, and are preparing to plant seeds in the coming weeks.

RELATED LINKS
More about Chefs Move to Schools on the USDA.gov website.

If you’re a chef who wants to participate (PDF), CLICK HERE»

To sign up your school, CLICK HERE»

Sheet Mulching

Lasagna Layering Method

Katie explains layering the garden

In this video I am explaining the process of layering the garden, or "lasagna gardening". In lasagna gardening you layer the garden with newspaper, hay, good soil, and many organic nutrients. This helps the plant grow with lots of nutrients, and without the interruption of grass or weeds. The first step in lasagna gardening is to rid the soil of any grass/weeds. Then you lay down 6 pieces of newspaper together and use the hose to wet the newspaper down. After that, you put down a layer of nutrients and hay. Then repeat those steps until you have enough layering. The last step is to put a layer of soil over the newspaper. It may seem hard, but you can make a garden anywhere! 

Soil Amending

T. McCleod from the Bradford Store and organic gardener extraordinaire assisted us in soil amending by adding:

Calcuim carbonate - to stabilize
Phosphate -
sea salt to feed micro nutrients
liquid potassium

Just like a volcanic eruption, these residues help to re-mineralize the soil.

We added eco-boost that contain worm castings (poop) and amino acids

When our society uses chemical fertilizers, it literal kills the dirt of good microbes - the soil then becomes dead and cannot support production. We pledge to use organic materials.

THANKS TO THE CHEFS MOVE TO SCHOOL PROGRAM

Ms.Mary Jane and Ms. Kim helping out

The Soil Arrives

Our First Day

Here is Sophie setting paths in our garden with rocks donated by Ms. Barbara and the sundial project.

Cooking in the Community