Comments on: 9 things i needed to learn about sweet potatoes

By: TR

TR — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 15:05:40 +0000

I’m currently trying to figure out how to protect my sweetpotatos from voles. Baited traps don’t work because the voles go underground to feed on the tubers. I lost an entire crop of sweet potatoes, perhaps 50# worth, on my new garden from voles eating every last tuber. The vines above showed no sign of the chomping going on underground except perhaps a bit of wilting sometimes. Its very disheartening to go digup your taters only to find big holes in the ground where they were. Sometimes’ I’d find two ends of a tater with the middle all eaten out. A couple times, I inadvertantly speared voles whilst digging for taters. Any thoughts are well appreciated. Burying metal barriers isnt exactly what I call a sustainable approach and filling the bed with sharp rocks as the Ag extension agent here recommends will cause me to slice up my fingers while digging up the taters. I can tell you one thing: I have a welcome mat out for snakes. Snakes are the only predators I know of that actually go down into the tunels where the voles are. Owls, foxes, and cats just arent effective predators of voles in my opinion. Any ideas on creating overwintering habitat/structures for snakes?

By: tropaeolum

tropaeolum — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:42:57 +0000

I started growing sweet potatoes in 2010 after I received some white sweet potatoes as a gift. I had never had a white sweet potato before and I loved them. They’re hard to find in a store, so I grow some each year and save a few tubers for planting the next spring.

This year might be a struggle because the person storing my sweets did not understand that they do not like cold temperatures. Here’s hoping that mine come through because I don’t want to lose my stock of white sweets (and the story behind them).

By: margaret

margaret — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:40:24 +0000

In reply to Jill.

Hi, Jill. They are very ambitious growers, whose foliage by high summer will totally fill a bed, so I don’t think that other plants in the same bed will like the experience. :) My main issues with them is that their foliage is VERY attractive to woodchucks and rabbits (and I am in a rural area where such creatures like to visit). To get the best yield many Northern growers swear by black plastic as a “mulch” (which warms the soil and also prevents the vines from rooting multiple times as they scramble around). Like this. Another reason other crops might not love the situation.