Fire moving across the field. |
Musings, impressions, poetry, pictures and everything else about my experiences in gardening, especially as I learn about taking it to a new level.
Fire moving across the field. |
Spent flower heads of Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum). |
Pruning shears for size reference. |
I dug one hill of sweet potatoes yesterday to see if it is harvest time.
And look at this!
All of this from just one plant, and 24 more plants in this one bed. Of the six beds of sweet potatoes -- approximately 250 plants all totaled -- this one bed might be the highest producer. It was one of the first beds planted and the orange sweet potatoes -- Beauregard -- tend to be larger with more sweet potatoes per plant than either of the whited-fleshed or all purple ones. The Beauregards planted a couple of weeks after these also might produce less. The only way to know for sure is to dig them up.
Today I removed the fencing and cut away all the vines in this one bed. I will wait a couple of days to dig. That supposedly gets the curing process going. It also makes this big job (remember, 250 plants more or less) a little more manageable, taken in smaller steps.
In the meantime, my husband is cutting back the vines poking through the fencing. I was depending on the deer and rabbits to keep the vines pruned back to the fence. After a solid start on the task though, they got lazy.
Once we get all the roots dug up, I will cart the sweet potatoes (500 pounds and more, we're hoping) up to the attic in buckets. This is the warmest place in the house when the sun shines, so it will provide a good temperature for curing. The sweet potatoes will get packed into boxes and crates to maintain humidity. The curing process changes starches to sugars, making the sweet potatoes sweeter and tastier. You can eat them right out of the ground, but they don't taste as good. About two weeks is the recommended curing time, but longer doesn't hurt.
After curing, we'll pack the sweet potatoes into sturdy plastic crates, sorting by size and variety, and put them in the root cellar. The best temperature for long term storage of sweet potatoes is between 55 and 60. Packing them in crates keeps the humidity high around them.
My husband ate through last year's crop by January or February (they're mainstay of his diet), so I'm hoping this crop lasts a bit longer. The rains we had in late spring and early summer helped get the sweet potatoes on a good start. And I watered them regularly.
Anything you can do with regular potatoes, you can do with sweet potatoes -- stews, fries, chips, mashed -- plus. They also lend themselves to sweet dishes, and don't necessarily require additional sweetening.
The white-fleshed sweet potatoes are even sweeter than the orange ones, while the all-purples ones are starchier, but oh so tasty and pretty.
Nutritious, flavorful, and pretty easy to grow. That's the sweetness of sweet potatoes.
A beautiful symbiosis of color, as the goldenrod seems to allow a spotlight on the aster.
Why do asters and goldenrod look so beautiful together?
That was the question Robin Wall Kimmerer (author of the much loved and acclaimed book "Braiding Sweetgrass") said she wanted to answer, when asked why she wanted to become a botanist during her freshman entrance interview for college.
Of course, the "real" scientist interviewing her scoffed at that answer.
But... why do goldenrod and aster bloom together, the colors yellow and purple complementing each other so well?
It's almost as if some intelligence designed it that way. Mother Nature is such an artist.
White Snakeroot, Ageratina altissima |
Tall Boneset, aka Tall Joe-Pye Weed also blooms white in the meadows now. A closely related species, White Snakeroot, lights up the edges of the woods with its fuzzy white flowers.
The most famous of our yellow flowers, of course, is the sunflower -- rather sunflowers. So many species of sunflower populate the meadows and roadsides that it's nearly impossible to tell which is which. Except for our common, annual sunflower, Helianthus annua, with its large, dark center. Many of the other sunflowers are perennials, including sunchokes (most commonly, Jerusalem artichoke) which provides a tasty tuber.
But these are not the flowers Robin Wall Kimmerer expressed curiosity about when she sought to be a botanist. It was the beauty of the asters and goldenrod growing together that most impressed her.
So, why do they look so beautiful together?
Did they evolve together for our benefit?
Not likely. We, perhaps, simply evolved in order to be able to appreciate their beauty.
It's paw paw season here in Northeast Kansas, and some people are out hunting for this precious treat, trying to beat the local wildlife to the ripening fruit.
Maybe 15 years or so ago I discovered a couple of paw paw trees growing just beyond the edge of the woods around our house. I noticed the first one because of its deeply colored, bell-shaped flowers that are large enough to be seen from a moderate distance. Even though paw paws are native to the eastern third of Kansas, I had never seen a paw paw tree before.
I was delighted to discover the tree's identity. The paw paw is the largest native fruit in Kansas, and seems more like a tropical fruit than a temperate region one. The fruit is probably about the size of a medium to small orange, but oblong in shape (as you can see in this photo). It is sweet and custard-like in texture when fully ripe.
The tree I found in our woods never produced fruit, although it had numerous blossoms. And it died two or three years later. I discovered another one in another area nearby. It is still alive, but is struggling. This rocky hill is not the best habitat for a paw paw tree.
The paw paw tree does prefer a shaded habitat, but does best in rich soil, especially near water. I've heard that many can be found in the woods around nearby Clinton Lake.
About 10 years ago I planted a paw paw tree near our house, but out in full sun next to some other fruit trees, which are now gone. I shaded it when it was young, but a mature tree can handle sun. It started fruiting about three or four years ago, but not prolifically. We did get nine paw paws last year. Such abundance! About a month ago I found four paw paws lying on the ground beneath the tree. It was a hot day and they were lying in the sun. They still felt firm, although warm. I brought them in the house and set them on the counter. It was far too early to harvest paw paws, but they do ripen off the tree. In about a week they were ripe enough to eat. So we ate them.
One paw paw still clung to the tree, and I checked it frequently, fearing squirrels or some other wild being would make off with it. Squirrels often steal apples from our tree.
A few days ago I couldn't bear it anymore and plucked the above pictured fruit from the tree. It is now ripening on the kitchen counter, and has softened some. Soon we'll feast on paw paw.
You can learn a little more about this tasty native fruit at Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses.