10/15/2026
🍠 One of our most important storage crops is the sweet potato! It's been a really busy week with lots of harvests of broccoli, greens, lettuces, and more. It's hard to fit it all in some days but every chance we get we're digging sweet potatoes because these babies are ready to come out of the ground! (Before the freeze comes...)
An important step in harvesting sweet potatoes is allowing them to cure. The process of curing allows the skin to dry and harden, which helps with longevity. Curing also quickens the conversion of starches into sugar, which makes them taste sweeter. To cure, the potatoes want a dark, warm, well-ventilated space. We’re using our greenhouses to allow for more warmth, and covering them with row cover fabric to keep as much light out as possible during the day.
For many years, sweet potatoes were one of our main crops. Even before our CSA started 11 years ago, we got our start selling sweet potatoes and winter squash to local groceries and restaurants. For the last couple of years, our sweet potato crop has been decimated by major deer damage. Last year was a bummer, as we had very few sweet potatoes to share in the CSA. This year, we made changes in our production system for this crop, and we’re very excited that the yield looks great. We are 1/4 of the way through the harvest for this crop and it looks like we have really good sweet potato days ahead!
