Sweet potato ground cover?

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Richard on Maui, Dec 26, 2005.

  1. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    To use sweet potato as a ground cover or not to use sweet potato as a ground cover? that is the question...
    We recently had some swales made in an area the we are going to plant to bamboo and fruit trees... We have about 9000 square feet of exposed soil, and a window of opportunity to plant it up with ground covers and pioneer legumes...
    I have been procrastinating a little bit, trying to decide which species to use... At Tagari in northern NSW we used sweet potato, and it worked well, being so rampant with the significant disadvantage that it climbs and smothers young trees if not kept in check manually... There is a distinct cool season down there where the sweet potato goes pretty dormant too. Here on Maui, there is hardly the same dormancy period and I am scared that let loose the sweet potato monster will be unstoppable.
    At the same time, I am tempted to unleash its rampancy, as we are having limited success with the perennial peanuts which are great, but require more assistance initially in the form of weeding and watering, and are so slow compared to the sweet potato...
    IN the meantime, we are planning to sow red cowpeas and lana woolypod vetch, and a lima bean that grows a lot of biomass, and probably some pumpkins and watermelons, sunflowers and a chopndrop mix of pidgeon peas, sennas and cassias.
    But what to do about the perennial groundcover???
     
  2. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    Richard,

    You know you should, you know you have to do this. All of the sweet potato vine is edible.

    Personally, I think it is a magic ground cover. It has never ever been as successful as I hoped.

    Just do it. Get it in, get it done and and snip the crap out of the consequences. It really is a kind plant, even when it is rampant, it is only trying to provide groundcover, steamed vegie and chook food.

    It doesnt get much better. We always found sweet potato [the root bit] as being a happy consequence of perma-gardening.

    Cheers

    Tropical floot
     
  3. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    yes best ground cover and soil improver i've ever had, grow it between the fruit trees along the rows and as fire resistant ground cover and weed controller.

    len :D
     
  4. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    We like sweet potato, too. While I enjoy the pintoy peanut, it is slow to establish and the sweet potato just goes places, areates and loosens the soil, provides food (tubers, leaves, shoots) , and I consider it to be a very useful (and delicious) part of our farm....
     
  5. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Okay, I was leaning towards going for it, but if all you guys will promise to come and stay with us on beautiful Maui, and cut the vines off the baby fruit trees, I'll feel a whole better about it! :lol:
     
  6. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Richard, it just struck me I never asked this...

    What is the purpose of your property? I know you're caretaking...but is the aim to be a producing farm, self-sufficient, improve value...what is the ultimate objective?
     
  7. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Well, that is a good question... I don't even know if I know the answer. I was brought out here to implement a Permaculture design of sorts, that was done for the owner by a friend of his... At the time of the design the owner was living here and planned to continue to do so, but now he lives on the other side of the earth and may only spend a few months of the year here in his retirement 20 or 30 years from now. So, who we are doing this for is a question I ask myself a lot.
    I try to answer it by saying that fruit trees and bamboo groves are good things for everyone... and hope that the work we do in pioneering a little bit of Permaculture here will provide some "right livelihoods" for those that come in our wake, whoever they may be.
     
  8. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Richard,

    What you said is great. In case you didn't already know it: you are a good person.

    C
     
  9. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    That's as good an answer as any I reckon mate... 8)
     
  10. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Richard,

    Now that we have publicly breached the fact that you are a great guy, I will just throw in that we have an area in front of our house that was crushed pretty heavily during construction, so we planted out sweet potato in an attempt to cover it with something edible and to loosen the soil.

    It looks great right now... as we cruise through the last of the rainy season...

    I love sweet potato...

    Best,

    C
     
  11. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Well, thanks for the kind words. We are in the process of propagating ipomea batatas en masse. I scored a bunch of recycled buckets today in which to root the cuttings...
    Let the rampage begin!
     
  12. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Okay, so noone even enquired about my quite sincere offer to come help keep the sweet potato ground cover in check on beautiful Maui, so I have planted the swales mostly to perennial peanut (arachis), with some help from other species...
    Thought I might share my plan of attack with you guys.
    We had propagated about 2000 arachis plants in 4 inch pots, which is quite a lot, but still not enough to cover the large amount of exposed soil created by the swaling process. We could have sheet mulched the whole thing, and given the peanut time to spread out that way, but it would have meant many trips to the recycle yard to collect newspaper and cardboard, and we would have had to collect a lot of mulch to go down on top of that. A big problem we have trying to sheet mulch here is that 80% of the grass species that are available to cut for mulch will actually vigourously grow from cuttings, even a month or so after they have been cut and left in the sun...
    So... we decided to plant a cover crop of annual legumes, woolypod vetch and cowpeas, and then plant the peanut into that, in the hopes that as the annuals grow like mad and protect the soil from erosion and add some nitrogen, the peanut will be busy establishing and hopefully fill most of the gaps before the annuals die off.
    It is a bit of an experiment, not sure if the peanut will actually do that well in concert with the more vigorous annuals, but I'll keep you guys posted as to our success.
    Oh, we wlso shoved in cuttings of cassava, sugar cane, bananas, pieces of tumeric and ginger, and random other seeds of flowers and other possible green manures, good bug habitat like buckwheat and flax...
     
  13. Stacm

    Stacm Junior Member

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    How exactly do you grow sweet potato ? Can I just plonk some organic sweet potatoes in the ground like I do potatoes ?
    Thanks
    S
     
  14. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    There is another thread or two or three here about growing them for food, where people have tried various means and methods. I would recommend you look in one of them for a whole bunch of trial and error already done for you. You can start them from pieces of tuber, especially if they have "eyes" on them, just as you would with the andean or irish potato.
    We take 30 cm pieces of stem cuttings and stick them in the ground. Mounded, slightly fertilised, well mulched bed for tuber production. Any old soil and even just slipped under piles of mulch for ground cover propagation.
    The sweet potato is frost sensitive and it takes 6 to 9 months to get much tuber production.
     
  15. heuristics

    heuristics Junior Member

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    sweet potato

    Hey I'm the expert on this (see post on convenience permaculture) because I have been growing sweet potato for oooh, a month now.
    I asked many questions about how to grow the ruddy stuff, I got a lot of answers, too, but nothing that I could actually understnd (reflects on me, not the volunteer help on line, mind you). And I got frustrated that the tubers didn't come with printed instructions - so I SHOVED EM IN THE GROUND!!!!
    Guess what - they are growing!! NATURE is absolutely simply amazing. This "higher intelligence" creature couldn't work out what to do with them, but the soil, water, sun and tuber knew exactly what was what!!!

    Anyone else with some REAL sweet potato experience should of course jump in here and contrib something actually relevant and useful at this juncture! (and thanks R-O-M!)
     
  16. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Heuristics,

    RoMs suggestion of inserting 30 cm of stem works for us! Try it and see if it works for you....

    C
     
  17. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Okay, several months later, and I feel like reporting back on this. Maybe someone will find it useful, I don't know!
    So we didn't use sweet potato, much. I don't know why, but where we have used it as a ground cover here it hasn't really done all that well.
    What we did was plant perennial peanut (arachis pintoi, and arachis glabra) on those swales. We started the peanut in a variety of ways; direct seed, rooted cuttings planted straight into the soil, rooted cuttings grown on in 4 inch pots and seedlings grown on in 4 inch pots. At the same time as planting the peanut, we also direct seeded cowpeas and woolypod vetch over most of the same ground. On some sections of the swales we planted the peanut pretty thickly and others we did it more sparsely, and we sort of tried various concentrations of the annual legume seeds as well. Other stuff that we threw out just because we had seeds and we love to broadcast seed was marigolds, calendulas, flax, and some flower that Lorinda grows everhwere who's name escapes me. We popped in cuttings and divisions of tumeric, sugar cane, dwarf bananas, cassava and ginger. A couple of pineapple tops. Also, we direct seeded a lot of pidgeon pea.
    Actually, on some sections of the swales we had a lot of nahiku grass, so we actually sheet mulched those sections with a lot of newspaper straw mulch.
    Now, not suprisingly, the sections that we planted most heavily with peanut now have the best cover of peanut. The annual legumes definitely helped to provide some living mulch and we and our goats and chickens got some food out of it too. But, where we planted a lot of annuals and only a sparse amount of peanut, well, the annuals died off and we had a lot of grass seed germinate and now we have a fair bit of weeding to do to. The areas that had thick peanut, but no annuals actually had quite a bit of grass grow in the time that it took for the peanut to establish.

    The sheet mulched areas probably have the best cover of peanut of all. Still, it has all taken a lot of handweeding to get it going, and it is going to take more I am afraid.

    I am going to try to and post some pictures of all this if I can figure it out...
     
  18. Forest Fairy

    Forest Fairy Junior Member

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    Morning all,

    Like Christopher we have suffered greatly in the hands of a 20 tonne excavator to build a retaining wall. The area that is trashed is directly behind the house.
    Lots and lots of shade, very wet most of the time and heavy heavy clay soil. Could I just go for it with sweet potato?? Don't care if it takes over. Will save me having to mow and always looks so nice.

    I do love arachis peanut (Pinto), but it takes so long to get going, is hard to grow from seed and is really only avail here in Nov - Jan if you can even find it that is.

    What to do????

    J
     
  19. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Well, you already know my answer. Peanut I think is more shade tolerant than sweet potato. Not so good if you get frosts though, but I have seen peanut doing really well on the sunny coast around Cooroy. I have found the main obstacle to growing from seed is that the sprouts are very attractive to rodents... other than that serious problem, starting from seed isn't so hard in my experience. It is easy, if time consuming to start from cuttings.
     
  20. Forest Fairy

    Forest Fairy Junior Member

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    Cheers Richard,

    I will give the peanut another go then. I do really like the look of it as well.

    Thanks for that

    Jules
     

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