spilt honey and fried frogs: November 2014

How and why you might want to cure your sweet potatoes

The best conditions for curing sweet potatoes are:

Upon taking your sweet potatoes from the ground remove the excess dirt without washing. Sweet potatoes, before curing, are tender and subject to bruising. Its best to just shake off the excess dirt because washing might bruise the tubars.

Lay the sweet potatoes out on a flat surface where they can be placed without touching each other.

Maintain the air temperature at between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

The humidity should approach 95%

Keep the air continuously circulating. (a small fan works.

Maintain these conditions for seven to fourteen days.

What results do you achieve by curing? Cured sweet potatoes are much sweeter and not as easily subject to bruising as their uncured counterparts.

The day before the first hard frost

Baby Arugula

Giant Red Mustard surrounded by lettuce

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce

Oak Leaf Lettuce

Baby Broccoli

Kale

These are some of the greens that are thriving out in our fields as of Friday afternoon. The forecast for tonight calls for a low of around 22 F. That's cold enough to damage many of the greens. What really determines whether the plants die or not is how deep the frost goes. If there is enough frost in the ground to damage the roots the plants usually die. To bad the hard frost couldn't wait until Saturday night. If that were the case our CSA members could come out and harvest all the greens they could carry home.