The 2016 Harvest

Better late than never? That's how the saying goes, doesn't it? As usual I've been meaning to do a post about the result of last year's harvest. And as usual, several months have gone by with no update.

I seem to have a spare half hour or so at 6.30am on a Friday morning, so here goes!

Last year's harvest was a HUGE improvement on the previous years and I think that was due to both starting the slips off earlier AND keeping the plants nice and warm in their polytunnels. The weather in 2016 wasn't particularly warm until later in the year so giving them that added warmth definitely helped. I guess there would only be one way to prove that and grow some plants without cover. Hmmm.... maybe that can be this year's experiment?!

Back to the harvest. I had a decent crop from each of the varieties, with the exception of Burgundy (again). The highest cropping varieties for me seem to be Bonita and Murasaki. Both produced over 2.5kg of tubers from five plants. Both are white fleshed sweet potatoes.

Bonita

One thing that was hugely different this year was the amount of vine growth, with some of them trailing several metres!

The best cropping variety last year was one of the new ones Orleans. This produced over 3kg of tubers. Once again, Burgundy was quite pitiful with only about 600g of tubers from five plants and they were small ones at that.

It was good to see I had some decent sized tubers this year. There were plenty of skinny ones still but they are still quite useable.

Whilst I seem to have grown slips for each of the varieties for 2017, I may thin out the number next year and stick to the ones that I know are going to produce a harvest for me. I'll probably choose ones which look different too. For instance, I love the skin colour of Belle Vue which has a lighter orange colour to it.

And so on to 2017......