Sweet Potatoes

My friend Susan asked for a report on the sweet potato crop we grew this summer. The seed catalog said they'd grow this far north. They did. They didn't produce too well. Of course, it was an exceptionally cold growing season, and the frost came in September already and nipped their leaves. In between all the rain showers recently, we managed to dig the potatoes. It's harder to dig up the sweet potatoes than the regular potatoes: the tubers spread further and they break more easily. (Maybe the potatoes would have been thicker and not quite so prone to snapping in half if we'd had a little warmth this year?)

Some of the potatoes turned out to be "real" sized, like the ones you buy in a store. Some of them are pencil-sized. A whole lot of them are about the size of your standard carrot. We harvested about three gallons of sweet potatoes, thus making it a slight financial gain and not a loss! But I suspect it's an experiment that maybe we ought not try again unless we move South ... unless Al Gore turns out to be right and we actually do get a little global warming someday.