Sweet Potato Ranch

I ordered a dozen sweet potato slips for $12 from George's Plant Farm a couple of months ago.  They arrived after six days in the mail.  The roots had been wrapped to keep them moist for their journey, but after so long a journey, of course there was no dampness left.  The plants were dry and the leaves so dried out they crumbled and fell off the slips when I unwrapped them.  
I ordered from George's Plant Farm last year and had a bumper crop of sweet potatoes, so I was very disappointed... not so much in George as in the United States Postal Service.  I emailed the farm and they informed me that they would be happy to send me more plants.  
As dead as the original slips seemed to be, I decided to plant them and see if maybe some of them would live.

This is pretty much what they all looked like when I set them out.  

And then, like Ezekiel's dead bones, they started showing signs of life!

Yes!  Those tiny slips on which I had given up REJOICED at the daily drinks I gave them and came back to life!

Some were more lively than others, but still.


Oh by the way, George never sends just a dozen.  If you order a dozen, he sends you at least sixteen plants.  So when I went out to take stock of things today, I realized I had fifteen living sweet potato slips.  Maybe sixteen:  The one in the top picture doesn't look like it's alive, but neither did the others when I set them out.  He might just be a little slow.  
Then I went to the mailbox a while ago and found that my replacement plants had arrived.  They were in great shape, by the way.  So what else could I do?  I started setting them out.  

There was room for some of them in the raised row with their older, valiant brothers.  

I put the rest in a row next to the raised row.  I did not raise this new row.  I was tired.  Let's call it an experiment to see whether I need to go all that trouble of making raised rows.  Yeah, that's it.  
I now have three dozen sweet potato vines, and no cellar in which to store sweet potatoes.  It's OK, though.  Last year I found out you can mash cooked sweet potatoes, put them in conveniently-sized containers, and freeze them.  We love sweet potatoes, and there's only one more container in the freezer.  


If you want a source of good, healthy sweet potatoes, guaranteed to arrive in decent shape, I highly recommend George's Plant Farm.