Fagan came and weeded the pumpkin/potato patch on Sunday (29 June). He found a colony of delicious, fat, juicy yams. We ate most of them for lunch! The end with undug potatoes was not weeded.
Yesterday (1 July) I covered the weeded area with black plastic. There is too much twitch in there and the only way I know to get rid of it is to cover it with plastic and dig an edge into the ground so that the twitch runners can’t get through. Dad has some metal roofing tiles that will do that job nicely!
I also dug at the end of the potato patch where I thought the purple potatoes were growing, but only found a few small ones. Perhaps they are further in. I plan to roll the plastic out over the potato patch as the potatoes are dug. Any left there in spring will be covered over with plastic. Potatoes that I want to retain for seed will be planted in the garden beds inside the fence. The exisiting yam patch will be halved in size and the south side planted with jerusalem artichokes. Yesterday I began removing the yams from that side of the patch – I dug about 4l of yams from 1/8th of the whole yam patch. They are growing very densely in the ground – they seem to like being planted under a think layer of peastraw.