lentils! (including in sweet potato shepherd’s pie)

With their slender stems and perfumed blooms, sweet peas are a firm favourite for cut flowers.

Sweet Potato Flowers are not only beautiful to look at, but also offer many uses! Let’s have a look at them in detail!

So potato farmers were on the news complaining about the lack of rain which is a bit rich after such a wet winter. Planted seed has not broken the soils surface on some farms. ‘Potato crops will be ruined, prices must go up, spuds have had their chips.’ Short of spudding a new well it is up to the gardener to augment the normal efforts.

My Solanum Crispum is now about 8 feet high but is covered in purpley-blue blossom most of summer. I prune it to keep it at that height or it would go on to 20+ feet tall.

Homegrown tomatoes taste heavenly when they are sweet with a hint of tart, acidic flavor. If you want to grow the same, there is a science behind it. Learn the Number One Technique to Produce Sweeter Tomatoes to enjoy a sweet summer harvest!

St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is a popular celebration in the United States, due to the number of Americans, 10.5%, with Irish heritage. One million Irish emigrated to North America, Australia, or other parts of Great Britain in the mid-1800s because of the potato disease now known as late blight. Late blight, caused by the water mold, Phytophthora infestans, destroyed the Irish potato crops in 1845 through 1849 and caused the Irish Potato Famine. Another one million people died from hunger or disease.

The sweet potato is a starchy, sweet-tasting root vegetable. They have a thin, brown skin on the outside with colored flesh inside, typically orange in color, but other varieties are white, purple or yellow. You can eat sweet potatoes whole or peeled; the leaves of the plant are also edible. While called ‘potatoes’, sweet and white potatoes are not actually related. Botanically, the sweet potato belongs to the bindweed or morning glory family, whereas the white potato is part of the nightshade family.

Sweet potatoes, any way you serve them, are yummy and very nutritious. They are one thing that you can plant in the garden from April until the first of July, so you still have time to get them in the ground. I received some slips of ‘Bradshaw’ sweet potato recently and am looking forward to growing them in the garden at the Clemson Extension office. David Bradshaw was one of the most beloved professors in the Horticulture Department, and he was very involved with organic and heirloom plants at the South Carolina Botanical Garden. The sweet potato was developed from the Mahon Yam (which is really a sweet potato) by Dr. Bradshaw and given to one of my classmates who has grown it for many years, saving a few each year to grow out the slips.

2 packages frozen phyllo dough tartlet shells 1 small package instant vanilla pudding 1 cup milk ½ cup canned pumpkin or sweet potatoes (pureed) 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (½ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp nutmeg and ¼ tsp ginger) ¹⁄3 cup whipped topping (optional)

I must be selective in the kinds of shrubs and trees I add to my landscape. Very simply: I don’t have the room. Like the village matchmaker, Yente, in Fiddler on the Roof, I match the plant with my landscape, paying particular attention to sun exposure, drainage, and room to grow. I also consider its maintenance requirements, particularly water, fertilizer, pruning, and pests. As a tough-love gardener, I have no tolerance for needy, wimpy plants.

I REMEMBER THE PHALAENOPSIS ORCHID I GAVE my sister at Thanksgiving a few years ago, one of two of the same variety, keeping one for myself. Mine never rebloomed, and as for my sister’s–well, hers never stopped.

Unlike white potatoes, where you plant a “seed potato” whose eyes are starting to sprout, with sweet potatoes you start with bits of vine called slips. Glenn Drowns of Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa, who lists more than 100 sweet-potato varieties in his amazing catalog, explains the origin of the word slip:“A slip is a single plant (with small roots) that is sprouted on the sweet potato root and then slipped off so that you may plant it in the garden to grow a sweet potato plant.”Each slip doesn’t look like much when it arrives—a piece of vine with some roots and maybe a leaf or two, usually a little pale and worse for the wear after days in transit. But it will quickly rebound if planted promptly according to some basic guidelines (that’s the above-ground bit of one a day or two after planting,