The Great Sweet Potato Panic of 2021

It wasn’t so much of a panic as it was a freak out. Let me say, I actually had room for sweet potatoes this year (imagine having more garden area) and I was going to turn it into potato country. Ok, a strip. A potato strip. The only thing I was missing were potatoes. 

I hadn’t been to Natural Gardener since before the Big Shutdown last year. They shuttered their shop and turned out the lights. They started opening up little by little, limited hours, restricted areas. It’s a popular nursery and I didn’t want to deal plus it’s a little ways out from home. There are plenty of other nurseries that are closer to home. 

Eventually though, in April, I decided a visit to Natural Gardener could be a nice birthday outing. Ha, ha and ha. It was not. There was a 45 minute wait in the car in which we crept inch by inch just to get into the parking lot. When we did get in, most of the grounds were restricted. The thing about NG is that they have a lot of established gardens and areas that are inspiring. It’s beautiful.    You can see the potential of a seed. 

There are guinea hens, donkeys, chickens, cats. I think the donkeys are gone but even still, there’s a lot to see. And a lot to buy. But it was so scaled back that it was a little on the sad side. 

I gawked and gazed and strolled. I found what I was looking for, sweet potato slips! They were bundled by the dozen. I chose the Beauregards over the Vardamans. 

Once I was home I unwrapped the little bundle. They were pretty scraggly. Some did not look viable at all. They’d seen better days. Still, I put them on the long mound I made for them. I surrounded them with bush bean seeds and around the perimeter I put French Marigold seeds which always do well for me.

I checked the potatoes daily, sometimes twice a day. Pretty soon I began losing a few here and there. My potato mound was going to be a bean mound soon if I didn’t do something. And that something? Buy more sweet potato slips! And I did.

I found more Beauregards online, another dozen. The order came surprisingly fast, too fast because I was only going to fill in the bare areas of the mound with 3 or 4 slips and the rest would go into a different bed entirely, a bed which was not at all ready. It hardly had enough soil in it and worse, it wasn’t chicken proofed in the least.   

And this is where i spiraled. The remaining slips were in a glass of water in my kitchen. I checked them regularly and rinsed them so they wouldn’t turn to mush but no matter the attention I gave them they started to rot. They were pretty much composting before my very eyes. 

Yeah. My mind started whirring. I started texting friends with desperate texts. “Can you take some potato slips off my hands, like tonight?” I reached out to several people and either got no for an answer or no reply whatsoever. I went out to the yard to see if I had any available space and it was like my garden had shrunk by a third. Where was all the space I thought I had? Where am I going to put the potatoes? I was going back and forth from the house to the garden texting and calling and checking my phone for replies. 

I pretty quickly figured out I was on my own for this one. I just had to find temporary places for 8 plants. I collected 8 little containers and filled them up with soil and still warm compost that I took from the chicken coop several weeks back. Planting the slips made me slow down. They would survive. If all goes well I will finish the bed that they were intended for this Memorial Day weekend. And in 4 months I’ll be making the other call, “Hey, do you want some sweet potatoes? They’re really good. They’re Beauregards”.