Sweet potatoes are not difficult to grow where I live. In fact, once planted, they may be around forever.
I’ve dug my sweet potatoes, but little shoots keep on sprouting. I’m finding them in the garden, and in the walkways. Any parts of the original plant, that have been hidden underground (roots) continue to grow.
Sweet potato slipPotting mixCompostSlip is planted
Later…
Potted sweet potato
Sweet potato vines are popping up in my walkways. The roots are left from the sweet potatoes I grew in that box last year.
Sweet potato vinesSweet potato grow bags
Some of the vines have been added to fabric bags and one went into a pot (above).
I don’t think sweet potatoes are meant to grow over the winter. Pre-orders for slips take place during winter and the slips are shipped in Spring. They are a Spring-Summer crop. I will let these grow and see what happens. The leaves are edible and I will use them while I wait for the potatoes to grow.
The sweet potatoes I dug this year were small but I still have a few left to eat. Most were funny looking and not anything like what you buy in the store. But they taste delicious. One day I hope to have a raised bed just for sweet potatoes.
It was a long, sleepless night – October 10th – spent listening to extraordinary wind. Hurricane Milton traveled across Florida from somewhere around Tampa on the Gulf, to the Space Center and offshore on the east coast. I live about 50 miles north of where the eye traveled, and we got some big wind.
Amazingly, we never lost power. It has to do with all the tree trimming the power company has been doing. And all the previous storms that help clear things out.
Now for clean upFloodingMoringa is down
We got off lucky with minimal flooding and damage from the hurricane. A few large oak branches fell in the driveway and the rest is mostly small stuff. I was pleasantly surprised after hearing that nasty wind.
In my garden, the tomato plants are dead, the eggplant needed to be propped back up, and the Moringa tree is completely down. My beet seedlings look like they might not make it, as they were flattened.
I had been excited to get growing this Fall, but now I feel like giving up. I seem to have way more setbacks than successes when it comes to growing a productive vegetable garden.
We were lucky. I haven’t seen news about the Gulf coast, but the damage must be horrible. They were still cleaning up debris from Hurricane Helene. North Carolina is in shambles, and fortunately this hurricane did not head in that direction.
The metal hurricane shutters on the windows will stay there for now. Hurricane season doesn’t end for over a month.
Hurricane Milton is coming. We are as ready as we can be, and now we are waiting.
We went camping over the weekend. When we came home Monday, we unpacked and began hurricane preparations for Milton.
Hurricane Helene mostly missed us, but this big one named Milton will not. We are in the path, with the eye going just a bit south. I live on the east coast and then projection is for a Category 1 by the time it gets here.
The Gulf will be devastated, and I can’t even imagine facing a Category 4. Many people have evacuated. Gas stations are without gas.
We spent the day putting up metal shutters on all our windows. We left some gaps in order to see outside and get fresh air with open windows once the storm has passed. There will be no power – for how long?
My son is a firefighter and is heading into work a day early. I hope the city will not be sending them out when the wind gets bad. People need to be self-reliant during times like this.
I expect power to go out and trees limbs to come down. Hopefully the flooding will not be bad, but lots of people were getting sand bags.
By tomorrow night we’ll be getting wind and then it’s a matter of riding out the storm into Friday. This is a big one, and damage will be extensive across the state.
After growing Roselle Hibiscus for a year, I have decided that one plant is enough for me.
This was my first year growing Roselle hibiscus. I was very happy to have bushy, big plants that would give me lots of tea to drink. But there are problems with this plant.
Growing Roselle was an experiment. I didn’t know much about it, but the tea is good for the heart, blood pressure and other things. It is grown for the red pods, called calyces that form after flowering. They are peeled, and the red petals are used for tea. The tea is delicious and healthy. The center of the pod is where the seeds form. Where I live, the bush is very easy to grow. I had no idea how much Roselle would love my yard. It took over.
Pros
Roselle is one of the easiest things I have ever grown. Plant seeds, or simply cut a small branch from an existing plant and stick it into the ground. It will grow! The plants are beautiful, with big dark green leaves. The flowers don’t last long, but new ones bloom every day – in the Fall. Then it’s time for saving the calyces to have tea in the months to come. I simply peel and freeze mine – if I can pick them before the ants come.
Cons
The beautiful bushes are not very strong. Strong wind catches the leaves and the whole bush will split down to the ground. Or, branches will break off. I lost one of my biggest bushes over the summer during a storm. Then Hurricane Helene damaged the others.
Pathway blocked by shrubsBeautiful shrub!
Roselle shrubs are huge. In a year they grew taller than me. They took over, blocked sun to parts of the gardens, and made navigating my yard more difficult. I didn’t know, and now I do.
These problems are manageable, and it’s all part of gardening. What I really don’t like about the Roselle is the ants. Once the red calyces began forming, ants were all over them. Maybe I have an excessive amount of ants in my yard, or maybe this is normal, I don’t know. No one warned me of this.
Also, inside each calyx are mealybugs – little white things. It just wasn’t worth the trouble to save these pods.
Covered in antsMealybugs inside
I have rinsed, set outside in the sun, rinsed again. The ants were everywhere. It was so bad, in this last batch of roselle I picked, that I gave up and threw them into the woods. It is possible the mealybugs cause the ants to come. I know ants show up when aphids appear too.
I did get an early set of pods, which had many fewer ants. I managed to clean and freeze those without much problem.
Another thing that is annoying is the flowers that drop become mushy and stick to my shoes. They make a mess. I’m certainly not a neat freak, but it feels like dog poop stuck to my crocs.
If I had lots of land, I would grow Roselle in a big area away from the house. They could expand and do their thing without getting in the way. Dropped flowers would be wiped from my shoes before I got back to the house. But this is not the situation I have.
One Roselle Hibiscus plant is enough for me. I’m going to cut them all down except one. Many broke and fell due to Hurricane Helene, so I’m already in the process of removing them. It is possible they will die over the winter anyway.
Solution
It is possible that my yard is not yet balanced with beneficial bugs to clean up this mess. I rarely see ladybugs. Even though I’ve had aphids on a number of plants, the ladybugs don’t stick around.
I read somewhere that it might take a few years to bring the beneficials to a garden, so I’m hopeful things will improve over time.
Hurricane Helene is bearing down on the west coast of Florida. Although I live on the east coast, we get wind and rain as the hurricane passes through. The storm could also change directions, and not follow the forecasted path. We all have to be ready.
In the garden, all I’ve done is tie up some of the taller plants. This includes the Celosia and Firespike flowering plants. The bell pepper is lanky, so I tied a rope around it as well.
Bell pepper plant
Celosia
I’m not doing much else to prepare for the hurricane. Even when very bad ones are heading our way, they cross over land first (usually) which slows them. Where I live, the biggest problem is possible flooding.
In the garden, I am more worried about the wind. I did some more trimming of the roselle bushes because they are susceptible to damage with branches breaking. I’ve already lost one during a windy storm a few months ago. Since then I have been trimming out the smaller branches.
I’ve touched on this topic in my recent posts. My garden grow boxes need re-filling, but first the drainage problem must be solved.
As I tackled the recent box I got some photos to better explain the problem. This is box number four or five in my line up. I have a few boxes left to fix. These are old boxes that I’ve had for a few years. Some are older than others, but they all need drainage issues addressed.
Grow box with watering tube in place
Grow Box System
The way this grow box is supposed to work, to my understanding, is that water collects in the bottom, while the dirt stays in the top. A plastic tube sticks up out of the dirt and that is how water is added. The roots of the plants pull water from the bottom, up through the dirt. A wide drain hole is located on each side of the bottom for water overflow. (See the box explanation on Amazon paid link – this is not my box, but very similar.)
This is a self-watering system, where you pour water in through the tube and the plants use it as needed. There will never be too much water because the excess comes out through the side drains. This only works for plants with roots long enough to reach the water reservoir!
Drain hole (one on each side)
This box is a nice idea for gardeners who buy potted plants and add them to the box. Seeds and small plants will need to be watered from the top, which is how I have used these boxes. I grow most everything from seed.
Dirt tends to sift down through the holes over time. Once enough dirt has clogged the water basin, there is no drainage. The plant’s roots are sitting in mud and that means plant death.
Plant Death
The sudden decline and death of a seemingly healthy plant brought this problem to my attention.
A gorgeous, Nu Mex pepper plant was growing in one of my boxes and it looked great. Suddenly, it began to wilt and ended up dying. As I pulled it out, I realized the dirt was soggy! The water had not been draining. It was the beginning of my grow box overhaul undertaking.
Nu Mex pepper plant in a grow box with bad drainage. It didn’t make it. Very sad.
I’ve been waiting for the plants in these boxes to either die off, or look bad enough to remove. Then, I dig out the old dirt and fix the box problem.
The Fix
Unless I take the time to remove all the dirt each growing season to check for this problem, the set up itself needs to be changed. Only time will tell if my “fix” is working.
Using a trowel I dig out the dirt from the problem box and add it to a pail or fabric bag. I’ll re-use the dirt, with some amendments added.
I found some lovely earthworms in this one. The dirt itself was crumbly and nice – thanks to the worm colony. Once I dug down to the panel with the holes, everything beneath it was mud. This was smelly, gross muck. As I dug through it carefully, I pulled out more worms. The worms were saved, and there were so many of them I added some to other pots and compost areas.
Grow box re-doWorm love
After the digging, the mud gets rinsed out. My son drills holes in the bottom of the box and it’s ready to re-fill.
Drilled holes added to the bottom of the box. This box is old and becoming brittle so we didn’t drill quite so many holes.
Box emptied and rinsed
Before I can re-fill this box, I need to add something to the bottom for drainage. Dirt alone will end up clogging the holes. I don’t want another drainage problem!
Drainage cuttings and stones
Ideally, I would have mulch for the bottom. I don’t have any, so I used cuttings from some of my garden plants. The granite stones were purchased a while ago from the local yard shop.
It’s good to keep stones of some kind around because they make good bottom-of-pot drainage in any situation. Because there are no rocks or stones to dig up here in Florida, I have to buy them.
The original dirt from the box (except for the mud) gets added back in. Perlite (paid link) is added to keep the dirt crumbly and draining well. I like to add Bone Meal (Amazon paid link) too for future root development. Eventually the cuttings in the bottom will decompose.
Coco coir is something I use to spread over the top of the planting space for seed development. This is a new experiment of mine. I’m thinking the looseness of the coir will be better seed starting.
Coco coir layer over dirt for seed starting
I have planted beet seeds in this box. It might be too early for them (too hot) but the box is ready for growing anything with a shallow root system.
Hydrangeas Blue 