Eating sweet potato leaves...

Holy cow, this sounds like a tasty way to forage the leaves of sweet potatoes.

Chao Fan Su Ye. One of the signature dishes of Taiwan!

I don't usually cook Asian food, but I can imagine this dish with garlic and olive oil. After last year's success, I've expanded my sweet potato bed.

And another tasty sounding recipe, African Stew with Sweet Potato Leaves. I'm unsure what makes it African, since the sweet potato is indigenous to South America, and I associate neither peas nor potatoes with African cuisine. Still, the recipe as an idea is appealing.

Before and after...

I planted sweet potato slips back at the beginning of May. I got the slips from my good gardening buddy Bill. Before I planted them, I spread a few wheelbarrow-fulls of trash wood mulch from the dump.

The sweet potatoes sprawled all summer, getting a bit bug-eaten but otherwise carefree and pretty enough in their own way.

I decided today was the day to harvest -- some of them were huge, some of them needed another month. I harvested about ten pounds in the, maybe, ten by ten area where I let them run wild.

The same bed, after I cleaned it out and spread about a hundred pounds of mushroom compost. That Russelia rotundifolia in the center is a remarkable butterfly attractant.

Family fun...

Hunting for the elusiva batata...

It's as big as 'is 'ead!

Fortunately I like sweet potatoes...

Sweet potatoes...

Note to self: I planted sweet potato slips on May 7, which means I need to harvest sometime after September 7. That gives me six weeks to solarize my bed, if I decide it's necessary, before the fall crop goes in.

Sweet potatoes, runner beans, tomatoes...

The layout of my cold-season strawberry bed: A rough circle that gets about 8 hours a day of hot sun. I dug the strawberries into the bed, and laid down another thick layer of oak leaves and grass clippings.

My son & I started the rattlesnake beans a couple of weeks ago : I'm running wire from stakes along the perimeter to a 10' high conduit pole in the center of the bed. In theory, they'll scramble up the wires, but not shade out the white sweet potatoes (planted on Sunday) that are planted in the center of the bed or the Sungold tomato that's training up the pole. The way the sun tracks, the left (north) side of the bed should still get tons of sun, even with the beans growing up the right (south) side. The bed's very heavily mulched with hay, leaves and pinestraw. I have some pentas and milkweed mixed in there, too, since this used to be my butterfly bed.

Intensive gardening!