I decided to try to grow sweet potatoes this year. I think they were offered by the company from which I ordered some onion sets, and I thought what the heck. I don’t really like sweet potatoes, but my partner does, and I was game to try something new.

One day this spring, some scraggly little stems showed up in a box on my doorstep. Fortunately, the sheet of instructions offered this reassurance:

“Plants will succeed even if they are yellow, slimey (sic) and have an odor that almost unbearable.”

Wow. Who knew! That got me reading the rest of the instructions, which included a lot of strange words in quotes (i.e. ‘Nutritious “homegrowns” for your family,’ and ‘Use care in “digging” your potatoes’ and illogical statements like “Successful Sweet Potato Growing is very interesting. Some gardeners have excellent results…others only fair but in general all gardeners follow these directions in some fashion.” That left me scratching my head.

But my very favorite thing in the folded sheet full of rah-rah cheers for the marvelous sweet potato was the promise that harvesting my Big “Jumbo” size potatoes would be my most exciting garden experience ever. That sent me into spasms of laughter.
Well, it’s not harvest time, so it could be right. Though I’m not sure that says much about me as a gardener if it turns out to be true. Can gardening be so deadly dull that sweet potatoes reign as the top thrill?

Which brings me to today’s question. What’s your biggest gardening thrill? Don’t want to admit you thought it was thrilling? How about your gardening high points (at least until you plant sweet potatoes)?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under Potatoes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.