Fall crops

Things are definitely winding down.  This week the sweet potatoes and the last of the winter squash came out.  Well I should have gotten the sweet potatoes out two weeks ago, before the rains. The sweet potatoes were planted in one half of this bed, the other half got a summer squash.  One end also got a single row of pole beans.  Between those three crops this bed has produced an estimated 65 pounds of vegetables.

Well the sweet potatoes look pretty funky.  A lot of them are split and otherwise damaged.

Closer up:

I kept about half of them and put them in the mobile greenhouse to cure. The redder roots - these are Georgia Jets - are from vines that put down secondary roots.  They haven't been in the ground as long.  I'll try another variety next year.

The winter squash gave better results.  The Teksukabotu vines trailed well over 30 ft from where they were seeded.  They put down new roots along the vine.

It was quite a pile of foliage.

The sweet potato and squash remains all went into the compost bin.  It took some machete work to chop them up so they would all go in, as the vorpal blade went snicker snack.

These Teksukabotu squash are very productive.  The first harvest already gave me 23 lbs of squash from just two plants.  The greenish squash is certainly not ripe.  After the first week of September any newly formed squash were removed since they had no chance of ripening before the first frost.  Looks like I missed this one.  The others have had close to two months on the vine, and with a little curing in the sun should be fine.

With the squash out I removed the trellises and mowed the grass, or weeds.  They really weren't that bad as the squash leaves made dense shade.  The former squash bed is that brown patch in the background.

The landscape timbers in the two beds in the foreground are rotting and will have to be removed soon.  I'm thinking about making an open bed in this area and rotating potatoes, sweet potatoes and squash through the area.  The ground slopes away to the right and even an open bed will need some kind of terracing at the point where the slope becomes severe, basically following the outline of the present beds.  I'm thinking of felling some small trees in the woodlot to make the terrace.