Garden Planning Has Begun….
… and its taking over my brain!
My friend Marge told me about Territorial Seed Company because I was having a hard time finding a seed company online that gave exact planting to harvest dates for every one of their products, but Territorial fit the bill. And now I’ve got a draft garden layout and plans to co-opt a section of dirt behind my apartment building, and a lot of dreams of green growing things and all the preserving I plan to do next year.
I was considering growing sweet potatoes (my staple root veggie since it is higher in nutrients and lower in carbohydrates than regular potatoes, thanks Diabetes), but I would need dirt to mound, which I don’t have and can’t really steal from other community garden plots. So sweet potatoes will wait for another year when I have a bit more time to plan.
Also trying really hard to get the book pre-orders up ASAP. Watch this space.
M
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Comments
For next year, investigate the possibility of growing sweet potatoes in a barrel. I don’t know if it can be done – but my dad does it with ordinary potatoes all the time and gets a great yield and there is no banking involved.
Posted by: Janine | March 14th, 2010 03:58
You can buy dirt at any store that sells garden stuff– Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-Mart. It comes in bags and they have a dizzying selection of it. Dirt for every purpose!
Posted by: Your Sister Sarah | March 14th, 2010 07:02
I have some unneeded piles of dirt on the side of my house – it’s mostly topsoil from the old garden beds. However, I’m not sure how to transport it other than in 5-gallon buckets.
Posted by: Cheryl S. | March 14th, 2010 10:33
I have tried to grow sweet potatoes in this Utah climate and had great success growing beautiful leaves but not so much success with the tubers. Let me know how you do with that. If you have success, perhaps you could send tips.
Posted by: Jo | March 14th, 2010 19:21
You can definitely grow container sweet potatoes! I don’t know how that might work in a community garden, but if you get super-cheap (okay, ugly) containers, I’m sure they wouldn’t walk away. They work great (Better than in the ground for me)!
Posted by: Elizabeth L in Apex, NC | March 15th, 2010 16:22
I’m thinking of trying sweet potatoes in potato bags. Gardener’s Supply Company sells them. You roll the edges up as the plant grows. I’ll be trying this with regular potatoes too. The bags are kind of expensive, so you might consider trying to grow them in black trash bags, although there might be a concern of the plastic stuff leaching. The bags at the Gardener’s supply co. is more porous. Good luck with your garden!
Posted by: Karma | March 23rd, 2010 15:09
Mim,
My dad lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, a different climate than found anywhere in Utah; he has grown sweet potatoes in big pots and decided that he could buy them for less in the store. He usually has pretty good luck with gardening.
I have seen a demo on-line about using a plastic garbage can to grow potatoes. They come in multiple sizes, so you could start small. The advantage of a small one to start would be that if they need more time before frost, you might be able to move them to a more sheltered location.
Re: Territorial, they used to advertise that they produce their seeds for the Maritime [meaning climate affected by the ocean]Northwest. It is possible that they have expanded that in the past few years to include harsher climates. Best of luck.
Happy Planting!
Posted by: Mary Kay Bender | March 31st, 2010 23:32