I wrote about perennial tomatoes when I took cuttings from my favorite plants of the summer.
They were rooting quite well in a sunny, south window when I discovered I hadn't gotten rid of all of the aphids that were on them when I took the cuttings.
So, I took them outside and
rinsed them off with the water from their jars, washing some of the
aphids off. I have had a bottle of insecticidal soap for a couple of
years that I have never used, until today. I hope it gets rid
of the aphids so I can keep these plants going all winter. 
We harvested the last of the sweet potatoes a few days ago.
There were five more hills and we were pleased with the results.
We figure we have about 25 pounds of sweet potatoes.
That is a pretty good deal for our first real crop.
It gave the usual recommendations for starting sweet potato plants in a jar or soil, but the third idea is what caught my attention. Take 6-inch cuttings from existing vines in the fall and put them in jars to root.
But I just dug up all of my potatoes! Well, not all. I
still had the small hill back in the herb bed that grew from a small
potato that was grown last year. Yea! 
So, for my second perennial vegetable, I have sweet potatoes rooting in a jar next to the tomatoes. I am very intrigued and excited about the possibilities this brings to continue a variety of plant that produces well and tastes good. It will also provide nice sized healthy plants to put out in the spring.
Learning. What a great thing to do! Every day. Every single day.
Until next time - Fern
For over-wintering: My wife, (Fiona - a plug for brownie points there!) had been reading about ginger and bringing it in for the winter. It was already well toward fall. I bought a 15? gallon muck tub and some potting soil. I put some gravel in the bottom and then the potting soil. I drilled some drain holes around the bottom. We went to the supermarket and found a hand of ginger that was sprouting. It is really a rhizome. We broke it up into small pieces. We had about seven or eight small pieces from the one hand. What the heck, if I destroyed it, the potting soil was still good for next year. We put the pieces into the soil about an inch and a half down and kept the muck tub uncovered and damp(not wet). Several weeks later, we had nothing. Fiona was fixing some dried beans for dinner. She said what the heck. She took some of the beans and pushed them into the soil. It is frosting by now, but, you know what? Those old dinner beans sprouted! And, I guess the ginger was jealous. It decided it was time for it to sprout, also. So, we had beans (for nitrogen fixing) and ginger growing together. All winter long. Fiona even hand pollinated a few of the blooming (really) beans and we had a few. Come spring, we got several messes of beans and about midsummer, not knowing what to do, we harvested the ginger. Fiona put seven hands of fresh ginger into the freezer, we replanted 15 more nodules back into the tub in new soil for this winter, and we had the early spring beans from overwintered beans and ginger that sat in front of the west facing picture window all winter. We now have another tub of ginger going for next year. It only gets about 20 inches tall. Sweeter and richer flavor from fresh ginger, per Fiona. We both love your blog. Keep going.
ReplyDeleteRalph and Fiona
Thanks for sharing. The ginger I planted this summer is much smaller than yours. I haven't dug any of it up yet to see how much it has grown.
ReplyDeleteFern
My father-in-law used to dig up a couple of sweet peppers just before frost, put them in a pot large enough to hold the root ball but not much bigger and bring them in the house. Set in a sunny window he watered sparingly, hand pollinated by rubbing his thumb over all the blossoms and have 1 or 2 peppers each month from each plant. In the spring after all threat of frost was over he'd replant them in the garden for another year. They would produce a couple of months earlier than the new plants My understanding is that peppers can live for several years in the garden in places where there is no frost or very little. I did keep a potted pepper here in SW Florida for a couple of years but production was sparse the second year.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information! I knew I could learn more about 'perennial' vegetables. I may have to try this next year.
DeleteFern
Fern, I don't know your policy on name dropping. I can't remember seeing any. So, if I am in violation, I apologize and you are more than welcome to edit as necessary.
ReplyDeleteOn sweet potatoes, We order from Sandhill Preservation Center in Iowa. They are a husband and wife team working our of their home. They are heirloom preservationists. I never counted, but they have over one or two hundred sweet potato varieties. Being in Iowa, they are late on delivering slips for us, They are trying to get the money to go with hoop houses or green houses to shorten the delivery dates. I think I heard from them that they are running everything out of their kitchen, business wise. I am quite happy with them.
We live in town. We have very little garden space. We had no space for "Irish" potatoes. I work for a bakery. We use a lot of Honey. It is in sixty pound (five gallon) buckets. I brought a couple of hundred (really) buckets home. I planted my red, white and blue potatoes with white flesh and the red and blue potatoes with red and blue flesh into 114 buckets and set them on the back of the lot. We had new potatoes most of the summer. We brought the last of the potatoes in yesterday. We have had frost and freezing temperatures, but they were already dead, so unhurt. I had given eight buckets of potato plants away, so we only had 106 for us. A lot of those went to new potato harvesting. We still had a good harvest. Especially considering we would have had none from the garden. They were smaller than normal potatoes from several spring frosts and erratic watering. They were still average sized, just few large ones.
We did about as many buckets total with tomatoes and peppers in them. Hot peppers seem to do really well in buckets. Black Hungarian and Habanero and Sweet Chile and Serrano were all quite happy amd productive. Ohh, to harvest the potatoes, just turn the bucket upside down and pour them out. Then just pick them up. Easier than pie! A lot easier! (According to Fiona, not my expertise.) Thank you.
Ralph and Fiona.
Our comment policy does not prohibit mentioning sites or companies, just the running down of such or of other people. We don't post people's email addresses or advertisements either. Other than that, it's nice to share good resources. Thank you for the information. It's good to see how you are stretching your garden space without a garden.
DeleteFern