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Friday I dug my sweet potatoes, some was really nice but a lot of puny ones too. A lot had been eaten on under the ground. Was it voles or moles or something else. :confused: It's bad enough when the deer nips the tops off when they are first planted, but eating the tubers really makes me angry.:mad:
Sorry you've had bad luck. We dug about half of ours today. After last years flood it is nice to see them doing good this year. Maybe you can find a way to deal with the varmints.
We had the same problem several years in a row and have now given up on growing them.
I'm thinking it was voles, from what I read it's either poison or trapping to control them. Deer and coons has convinced me not to plant sweet corn, I don't want to give up on my sweet potatoes too. I'll do more investigating on what to do.
I finally got a decent harvest of sweet potatoes this year! For the past two years chickens and squirrels beat me to them so this time I covered them with chicken wire and let the vines grow up through it. It did make for harder harvesting but at least I got some :)
I usually buy two or three sweet potatoes at the grocery store each fall, in case things go sideways and nothing is available by spring. This year I bought them a couple of weeks ago and for the first time ever, instead of storing nicely, they have all three rotted already.
I think I will buy more from a different store and maybe plant them in pots now rather than hang them in water with toothpicks next spring. If they do well, I will just keep the vines trimmed back all winter. Even scrawny cuttings of indoor vines should root and toughen up and fill out nicely once they are planted in the spring. I hope.