Sweet Potato Feast

I seem to be feeding lots of critters – mice, moles, roly poly bugs (pill bugs). They feasted on the sweet potatoes this year.

That’s just what I found in one bed! There were many clumps of roots with no potatoes so I know they ate the whole thing.

There’s one still eating! When I would pull the potatoes out of the ground, there were thousands of bugs on each one that they were eating. I’d just toss them over into a pile and most of them would scatter. I should have put them in a bucket of soapy water because I’m sure they’ll all stick around and be back next year.

This would have been a HUGE potato . . til they had their feast!

It’s partially my fault because of the finger injury. Even with a glove to keep dirt out, the finger stayed sore for so long so I didn’t tend to them like I usually do. Most of the time, after they’ve been planted about 60 to 65 days, I start poking around to see if there are any potatoes ready to pull. I didn’t do any of this until about 90 days after they had been planted and I guess there was a great opportunity there for them.

We still got plenty of potatoes. I saw that Azure is selling organic purple sweet potatoes for almost $2.67/pound, including the 8% shipping charge.

We would not have ordered as many as we grew but we have them and we’ll eat them and the savings on just the sweet potatoes covers the extra on the water bills for the summer.

I still have two beds to harvest but they’re the ones in the big plastic tubs. They were planted late because I had potatoes growing in those beds and it was potatoes I had planted later. I’ll probably dig those out the first or second week in October. I’m hoping since they’re off the ground, the roly poly bugs will not be in those but we’ll see.

I’ve heard that placing pie pans with beer in them around the sweet potatoes may help with the damage. You can bet I’ll try it next year.