Sweet potatoes and basil

For the past 12 weeks or so, I have been growing my sweet potato slips indoors in pots on a sunny window sill. The longest vine was about 18 inches long, whereas the remaining three plants were about 8 inches to a foot in length. The plants seem quite healthy and the weather here has been unusually mild, so I decided to plant these slips outdoors.

I am going to try to control my vines a bit and have them grow vertically rather than sprawling about the soil and encroaching upon my salad greens in the next section over. To do this, I joined together two tomato cages and stabilized the structure with some short stakes made of PVC pipe. The four plants were then set in the four corners of the cage.

Given the height of the tomato cages, I was no longer able to use a single piece of Agribon to protect the entire bed. So, I wrapped the tomato cages in their own piece of fabric and then married the two pieces together with a bunch of binder clips and some twine.

Here is the view inside of the row cover from the opposite end of the garden bed. As you can see, there is airflow between the two sections of row covers. In the foreground, these are my carrot seedlings after thinning to about an inch apart. I will probably have to do another thinning in a few weeks.

In other news, the Copra (front) and Ruby Ring (rear) onions are growing strong in the "tomato sauce bed". This bed will house tomatoes, onions, and basil. My tomato seedling are about six inches tall under the grow lamps in my home office, but I will probably wait at least another week before I dare put those outdoors.

However, I had no such fears about transplanting my basil today. After cleaning out all the weeds, they were all set in the soil.

basil, "Sweet Italian"

basil, "Spicy Bush"

basil, "Red Rubin"