Adam Burke

That's fantastic news. I'll reach back out in May!

Sand Hill lost this variety and others in 2020, as I said. They will not get it back unless someone gives them propagation material. I have checked other places that I have found that once grew it. I have asked stewards of other varieties. I was just checking if anyone here grows it. It is very likely extinct, but I am checking everywhere for the slight chance that it is not.

I grew Continental Red sweet potato a few years ago, and it was my favorite. I propagated it a couple years but had a crop failure and then I stopped gardening for a while. I want to grow it again and steward the variety, but Sand Hill Preservation Center had a major crop failure in 2020 and lost many varieties, including this one. I have been asking around to people I thought might be stewarding it, but I haven't had any luck finding it. I hope someone here grows it. It's a very special variety with chestnut flavor with pink-red skin and light orange flesh, cut leaves, and produces an above-average yield early in the season from semi-bush plants.

I read the book that you are talking about. It’s the same I’m referencing. None of you are answering the questions I asked. Do you actually give plants that can get many feet wide only 1 ft between plants in the prescribed triangle pattern? An okra seed for example, can produce a 10 ft tall by 8 ft across shrub for me in a few months that yields copious amounts of okra so that you need a bucket to harvest from plants that grew from 8 seeds. It would cost at least 50 times more for seed to plant enough seed using 1 ft spacing to fill the same space as seeds spaced 4 ft apart in rows 8 ft apart. What advantage would there be to severely crowding the plants thats worth 50x the seed cost?

Edit: The book says 12” bed spacing and 159 plants per 100 ft. I don’t see how that is 12” spacing but moving on… My 8 plants that got 8ft across took up 512 sq ft. 8 seeds = 512 sq ft vs 159 seeds (if all germinate) = 100 sq ft. To fill the same area that my 8 plants did using biointensive methods I’d have to plant 815 seeds. That’s more than 100 times the seed cost.

I'm curious if anyone has followed the chart in Grow More Vegetables for in bed spacing for all vegetables. It sounds totally bonkers to plant okra at 1' spacing, as single plants have grown 10 ft tall and 8 ft wide for me from June to September in a decently hot summer in Kentucky (zone 6a+). It seems like they'd grow even larger in California, so I cannot fathom where this 1' spacing recommendation came from. How does one justify spending 50 times more on seeds (in the case of my okra)? What about climbing peas? Less than a foot spacing per plant while filling the whole bed? How in the world do you harvest efficiently or even harvest the inner bed at all? It does make sense to not plant in rows, have wide beds that use space efficiently, but the in bed spacing recommendations don't mesh with my experience at all. What about tomatoes? or anything tall for that matter? Please enlighten me!