Odd Sweet Potato Trellis

I am growing sweet potatoes for greens in the house this winter, and for pretty. Today me and mom made an odd trellis for them. I had dragged home some rusty wadded up wire fencing from the burn pit near us (I'm like that) and we hammered it out flat, but couldn't make it lay straight, so we hammered in the curves. Decided we liked that effect, and hung two pieces like drapes on the window, and the sweet potato vines will have them covered soon. Rustic? Unique? Horrifying? Interesting use of burn pit trash? Hard to define this one.. :D

Update, 6 days later, the first of the vines has reached the top bar! This is going to be covered FAST.

Wow Pearl, are you sure you didn’t plant magic beans in there?  ;)

Ooh, I hope there are no giants living up there, I didn't make it extremely structural!

:D

I love it!  How exactly are you growing them indoors?  They look like they are just in jars of water.

Cris Fellows wrote:I love it!  How exactly are you growing them indoors?  They look like they are just in jars of water.

Yeah, they were. They are not doing well, will get moved/executed something. The water got slimy in a couple of the jars and kept resliming up. Bad experiment. The weird trellis worked well, and they hit the ceiling before they went bad. I think the temps in that room are wonky too, there IS no decent sunny window here.

Mine is sliming up the water now, too... 😞

Pearl,

I LOVE SWEET POTATOES!!!  I have tried to grow them for several years but every year they get eaten by deer, rabbits, etc.  

I have never gotten them to maturity and I was wondering if you had any techniques aside from fencing which I plan to do this spring.  

Thanks in advance,

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:

I LOVE SWEET POTATOES!!!  I have tried to grow them for several years but every year they get eaten by deer, rabbits, etc.  

I have never gotten them to maturity and I was wondering if you had any techniques aside from fencing which I plan to do this spring.  

Oooh, there are a pile of threads in the nibblers section about who eats sweet potatoes. I'm going for weird fencing, not sure what else to do. Lost 65 plants first year I was here to them, thought that i only had to fence them till they were growing well enough to handle being browsed. To the ground, entire batch. Sigh... Double fencing is so far working for me, one row chicken wire, one whatever. I think I'm going to put a craigslist ad looking for old fencing people want to give away, see if I can gt anything for my "whatever" fence lines. I don't need cute, I just need jump deterrent. Chicken wire stops the bunnies. Someone suggested trying chestnut hulls (SHARP!!) around the plants for bunny feet, I don't have hulls yet to try, I like that one. I'm also going to try massive aomunts of distraction crops. I saved seeds from every melon and squash we have eaten for the past few years, and I'm going to try a jungle of vines where the deer path is, and try to keep them down at that end of the property. If I fail, the neighbor shares his venison, organic free range venison :D

Thanks Pearl!!