Start of the Sweet Potato Harvest

September 26, 2025

Early morning Friday (September 19), I helped Bruce move the trunk of pine tree one. He was cutting it into sections. He needed the trunk moved so the chainsaw wouldn’t bind. As Bruce levered the trunk up, I pushed a piece of oak trunk, about 6 inches high, underneath the trunk of pine tree one. This allowed Bruce to make another section.

I stayed long enough to see the cut complete. This fuzzy caterpillar was on the section of the trunk that Bruce just cut into an eight-foot section.

I didn’t think to get a picture of pine tree one logs.

I walked back to the house to dig more grass from the large flower garden. I stopped on the patio to take a picture of a Red-spotted Purple butterfly.

I dug the grass out of the large flower bed while Bruce used his chainsaw to cut the eight-foot-long section in half, lengthwise.

I was able to remove the grass from the sidewalk edge to the center of the garden.

Once Bruce finished his chainsaw work, we moved two carts of Bama Dirt Pro Mix into the center of the large garden. I had received Irises in the mail and needed to get them planted. I wanted the Irises in the middle of the garden, so we moved dirt to the middle first. Once the dirt was in place, I planted the Irises.

That was enough work for both of us in the morning.

After lunch, Jeanne, from ajeanneinthekitchen.com, sent me this cute picture of her dog hiding in the sunflowers. Jeanne asked me if I’d be willing to make a picture of Juneau in the sunflowers. I thought it would be a fun project, so I asked for additional pictures of Juneau since her face was mostly hidden.

After looking at the pictures Jeanne sent, I developed a clear image of how I wanted the picture to look.

At 4:00 pm, it cooled off enough to make working outside pleasant, so we cleaned the floor of the potting shed to have a place to cure the sweet potatoes.

Ugh, the shed may be structurally sound, but it needs a lot of work. I want to paint the inside white at some point. It will serve the purpose of keeping the sweet potatoes covered so they can cure for two weeks.

I took this picture of the “hay” Bruce collected with the sweeper after we got back home from being gone for two weeks. The grass had gotten very tall!

After the shed floor was cleaned off, I put down a couple of blankets in hopes of a large sweet potato harvest. After gathering up implements of sweet potato removal, off we went to dig up the sweet potatoes. We were somewhat apprehensive that we wouldn’t have much of a crop. Bruce cut off the vines while I dug sweet potatoes.

From the first bed (A3), I dug purple sweet potatoes. I dug up 2 1/2 5-gallon buckets of sweet potatoes! They are big, plump, and smooth-skinned sweet potatoes. They looked beautiful! It was satisfying to see all the sweet potatoes! No failed crop this time!

It was hot and sweaty work. I was ready to call it quits after the first bed was dug up.

I was also ready to get something to eat!