Perennial Vegetables and the Last of the Sweet Potatoes

I have discovered two vegetables that have the potential of being indoor/outdoor perennials – sweet potatoes and tomatoes. And I bet there could be more, I just haven’t discovered them yet.

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.

There were a few odd red ones that came from a store bought potato that had sprouted. I stuck the whole potato in the ground in June. It didn’t produce as much as the other type. We’ll see how it tastes.

We figure we have about 25 pounds of sweet potatoes.

That is a pretty good deal for our first real crop. 

After we dug the potatoes, I got my gardening books out to read about how to cure and store the potatoes, again. I like comparing the information in several books. This is one of my new books that I haven’t read much in yet. But the first page about sweet potatoes had a very interesting fact that I had not read anywhere else (that’s why I like to have a variety of books about a given subject, whether it’s goats or gardening).

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.

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