This metre high plastic fencing has kind of worked.  They can fly over it and occasionally do, but mostly they can’t be bothered and stay on the appropriate side of fence.  It has the advantage of being entirely portable and will allow me to choose which areas of the garden they free range in.

For my most recently planted seeds and seedlings I have added additional reinforcement to allow the plants to survive in the instances the chooks do break free of the above fencing.  We initially built these cages to stop blackbirds from digging up areas of the garden but they work equally well for chickens.

The other method I have tried is just to put some chicken wire loosely over the planted area.  This did not work nearly as well as the cages.   They just ignored it and pecked and dug away at the area regardless.

Overall though I think my combination of protective measures seems to be working….for the time being anyway.  Now I just need to work out how to get them to go back in their pen at night rather than attempting to roost on the washing line.

I pulled the remaining few watermelon radishes this week to make way for my kohl rabi.  I hope I like kohl rabi as much as I’ve enjoyed the radishes.  I also pulled a few beetroot that were being overtaken by the rapidly expanding Calabrese broccoli.  I am eating a lot of them grated raw in salads.

My chillies and capsicum harvests slowed considerably this week although they are still noteworthy due to including the first of the long cayenne.  Or at least I think they are long cayenne.  My father bought some seedlings this year called ‘long cayenne’ but they were different to these with much shorter fruit.  My fruit are about 20-30cm in length and a good 1cm in diameter.  Has anyone grown long cayenne that were that long?  I saved seed from a fruit I bought from a farmers market and forgot to ask what the variety was called.

Also in the above basket is the first of the latest crop of Tahitian Limes.  I have quite a few on the plant this year with more setting at the moment.  I love how productive limes can be – mine is growing on dwarf root stock and is in a 40cm pot at the moment and seems happy and well….Touch wood….

My final basket this week is a bit of an odds and sods lot.  A bunch of basil, a very overripe eggplant to save seed from and my first ever home grown celeriac.  The celeriac is just a baby really – I have larger ones still in the garden but this one I planted accidentally in the wrong place thinking it was a parsley seedling.  I’d left it for a while but the area was under fertilised and I wanted it to grow other crops so out it came.  I braised it with some lentils and it still tasted great despite being such a meagre specimen.

That’s all from me harvest-wise this week.  Head over to Daphne’s for more.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I grew the sweet potatoes from shoots that formed on a forgotten tuber that was sitting in the back of my cupboard.  I pulled the shoots off the tuber and put them in a glass of water to root.  That was in Winter. Once they shooted I potted them up (in early Spring) and eventually planted them out in mid/late Spring.

I have followed this propagation method two years running now and I have to say it has proved highly successful.  The shoots root easily and the sweet potato vine grows well in Melbourne’s summer climate.  What has been slightly less successful is tuber formation.  Although I have had crops in both years they have been OK rather than huge.  Enough for a couple of meals but that is about it.  I’m not sure what to expect but this year my pot grown sweet potatoes averaged about a kg per vine.  I reckon I probably got a little under that from my plants in the ground last year.  My pots were in a sunnier position and this summer was warmer than the previous one, both of which I’m presuming helped.

I am also wondering if more fertilising would have improved the yield.  The bed I grew them in last year wasn’t in great condition and although I did give the pots the occasional seaweed emulsion feed I wasn’t as regimented as I could have been.

The biggest difference between growing sweet potatoes in the ground and in pots is the likelihood of the plants layering and creating additional tuber formation points.  When I grew the sweet potatoes in the ground they did layer a bit but the tubers that formed at those points were pretty small.

Having said that encouraging layering earlier could have the potential to improve yield considerably.

Regardless of the slightly disappointing yield growing sweet potatoes is a lot of fun.  The vine goes everywhere and, like potatoes, you get the excitement of digging up the tubers – always my favourite harvesting task.

Have you tried growing sweet potatoes?  What do you think they keys to success are?  How much variation is there between varieties?

Saturday Spotlight is a series of posts highlighting particular varieties of edible plants.  If you have a favourite, or even a less than successful variety of a plant and would like to include it in the series then please leave a comment with a link below.    I have created a page (above, just below the header) with an Index of all the Spotlights to date.   I will add links to any new posts below and in next weeks post as well as ensuring they appear in the Index.  

New Spotlights last week were:

Spearmint ‘The Best’ - Our Happy Acres

 Autumn Raspberries – Bek’s Backyard

And from this week:

Radishes – City Garden, Country Garden

Beetroot – Home Sweet Kitchen & Garden

Potato and Spring Onion Bhaji

• 1/2 kg potatoes
• 2 bunches spring onions
• 2 small whole red chillis
• 4 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp red chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp tumeric powder
• salt to taste
• 5 tbsp cooking oil

Peel potatoes and cut in four.  Heat oil in pot and fry spring onions.  Add spices and fry for further 3 minutes.  Add a little water to prevent burning.  Add potatoes and cover pot and cook on low until potatoes are tender.  Remove lid and reduce liquid if necessary.

I finally got round to making her recipe on the weekend and I absolutely loved it.

A most delicious lunch.  So thank you Nina and I hope anyone else who makes it enjoys it as much as I did.

I have chosen to select posts based on the number of comments they received.  I decided this was probably a truer reflection of audience appreciation of a post than say page views which tends to favour older posts.

These are my Top 5 posts that have received the most comments:

1. Reasons to write a gardening blog.  It seems I’m not the only introspective one, many of you want to talk about why you blog too.
2. The Bottom 5 - These were the 5 crops I have most trouble with or have deemed not worth growing for one reason or another.  I like this post a lot, mostly because the comments either offered great advice or made me feel better because most people struggle to grow some crop or other.
3. Hated Veg – Isn’t it interesting how much we all enjoy talking about what we don’t like.  Or as in many of the comments on this post, how much we enjoy trying to persuade people to like the same things we do.
4. Low or No Maintenance Plants - Lazy?  Who me?
5. Reasons why we got Chickens - I can now see why this was a popular post.  Chickens are fun and infuriating – both being worthy of lots of comments.

Anyway given my current lack of inspiration I have decided not to write a regular Top 5  post (I have been publishing every Tuesday) and instead just write them when the mood or inspiration strikes.  Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.  I still have a few suggestions readers came up with previously that I do plan to write on but if you have any more I would love to hear about them.