Root Crop

 

We were pretty excited for our sweet potato crop. Maybe a month ago we had dug a few hills and ended up with nearly two five gallon buckets full of large sweet potatoes. We had to mud those out due to the garden being so wet and didn't want to have to mud all of them out so we waited for a dry spell. That never really has happened but this morning as I write this, we had I think four days free of rain and so with a frost statistically possible at any time, we went into the garden determined to dig the rest. 

We did accomplish that goal though it would have been better if we had dug them a month ago. The voles had gotten into them in a big way and eaten probably a large majority of the sweet potatoes. In fact, they were still there because I dug up some that went scrambling away, although slowly due to them being the fattest voles I have ever seen. What they hadn't eaten, many had been gnawed on and had to be discarded. 

Fortunately, the crop was large enough that despite the voles getting more than their fair share, we were able to harvest enough to likely suit our needs. Likewise, I decided to dig up the remainder of our parsnips and while the voles hadn't eaten as many of them, they had eaten quite a few so we dug those up too. So despite all the advice I've read saying to leave both of those crops until right before or right after a light frost, I learned that perhaps I should dig them up sooner.

I suppose there might be away to take care of the voles, but my hunch is that it would involve some sort of poison which I really don't want inside our garden perimeter. I probably could limit the amount of mulch so that predatory birds could more easily spot them but then that means dealing with weeds which I am loath to do. I have some time to figure all this out but I suspect future planting will mostly involve planting more and just digging them earlier to limit damage.

I did some natural selection of my own and took out several of the voles with the garden fork I was using to dig up the root crops. They were quite easy targets being obese and slow. The hawks or perhaps owl will likely be feasting on them soon. The still green vines were in a giant roll that I pulled down to our compost pile. I had previously set up my game camera to catch most likely deer stripping off the leaves of the okra plants so will leave it out for another few days to see if the deer like sweet potato leaves as well.

The remainder of my sweet potato and parsnip crop are curing in our garage for a few weeks before we move them down into our basement with the potatoes.  It's not the ideal storage place for them being too warm, but it should provide some good eating for the next few months. I had been worried about finding places to give all the excess away but I am relieved of that burden for this year.