GardenDesk

I Yam What I Yam; I Yam a Sweet Potato!

One of the things I included on my 2007 Garden To Do List that I compiled in late February was to grow some "new vegetables and fruits that I haven't grown before." I have accomplished this by planting Blueberries, Horseradish and Sweet Potatoes.

I didn't start my own Sweet Potato slips, but I was able to find some "Beauregard" plants at the garden center.

Beauregard is the common orange flesh variety that we find at the grocery store. Some people call it the Louisiana Sweet Potato.

In researching how to plant sweet potatoes, I kept reading that you should plant them in high ridges 12 inches apart and in rows 3 feet apart. I plant in raised beds instead of rows. Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening doesn't mention sweet potatoes, but his principle would suggest that I could plant them 12 inches apart in all directions, so that is what I did.

I planted them in one of my 4 X 4 beds. I don't really know what their growth habit is so maybe this isn't enough space. I added sand to the bed when I planted them so the roots could have loose soil to grow in, and I think I should mulch this bed as well.

This is a new vegetable for me, so we'll see how it goes. Have you grown sweet potatoes before? I would love any advice that you are willing to share.

Oh yeah, one more thing brought on by my trying to be clever with the title - Is a Sweet Potato different from a Yam? When I research that question I get very conflicting answers. Some say they are distinctly different and some say they are the same but the term "yam" should be reserved for the orange fleshed sweet potatoes. What do you think? If you have a strong opinion either way, I'd love to hear from you. Maybe by harvest time, we can get this straightened out.

Grow Light Stand... on Steroids!

Since my last post showing my attempt at extra early ripe tomatoes, I re-potted those young tomato pioneers once more.

When I put them back under the grow lights, I remembered that I haven't showed you the light stand that I built new for 2007! Finishing this was one of the things on my 2007 Garden to do list post. I have always hung a few shop lights from the ceiling and had enough space for about four flats of seedlings. This year however, I've quadrupled my capacity!

It's big and heavy and a bit ugly, but oh how many plants we can grow now!

It is really just an old kitchen table extended with plywood and built up with scrap wood to sport a second level. With two levels, I can hang 4 shop lights under the top level and 4 shop lights from the ceiling. Under those lights I have room for 12 flats. Using cell packs that fit 72 seedlings per flat, that's a possible 864 plants at a time! That's not a real number because of transplanting to bigger pots. Regardless of the number, I think I finally have enough indoor grow space. I like to start almost everything on my garden list from seed. Last year it was pretty crowded under the lights. I found myself kicking plants out into the garden earlier than I wanted to just to make room for other plants. This is what my light table looked like last year:

Here is what each level of the new and improved light table looks like:

Bottom Level

Top Level (not being used much yet)

I didn't spend anything on the wood and I just use regular 40 watt florescent bulbs in the light fixtures instead of spending lots of money on "growlight" bulbs. To me the key is having a lot of light. Remember, with florescent lights we are trying to mimic the Sun. The Sun is so powerful and puts off so much light that even though we are 93 million miles away, we can't even directly look at it! With that in mind, I have added an extra light fixture per level. I have four fixtures over three rows of flats instead of the normal one fixture per row of flats. It is also important to keep the lights only a few inches above the tops of the plants. By suspending the lights with chains, I can easily adjust the distance as the plants grow, or as I use bigger pots.

I keep the lights on about 16 hour per day. I don't believe in using an automatic timer either. If I have to turn the lights on and off manually, that is a guaranteed two times daily that I will look at the plants. That way I will always notice when they need watering or any other attention.

This post was really only supposed to be about the new light stand. I will write more about the art of growing from seed later. After all, I still have about 1000 seeds left to start!