My father owns half an acre of land. In recent years, he is getting older and older, and farming is too hard. I am more than ten kilometers away from my hometown. It is inconvenient to go back to farming. I advised my father not to farm. Whoever is willing to plant it will plant it. No race is so barren. But dad didn't want to be wild and insisted on planting. No way, I can only go back to plant half an acre of sweet potatoes every year.
It's time to plant sweet potatoes.
It will take some time for Jiaodong to grow sweet potatoes, at least until mid-April, when the temperature rises and the ground temperature rises. In particular, the temperature difference between morning and evening will not be too great, and sweet potato seedlings will not be hurt by the temperature difference between morning and evening. If the planting time is too early and the night temperature in the north is too low, it is likely to freeze the leaves of potato seedlings. Therefore, there is no need to worry about planting sweet potatoes when the temperature is unstable. In fact, we can plant sweet potatoes in Jiaodong after May Day. I remember that the temperature was not high last spring, and our family didn't grow sweet potatoes until around May Day.
You must close the cage when planting sweet potatoes.
Sweet potato is a drought-tolerant crop and does not need fertile soil like other crops. Sweet potato is more suitable for sandy soil. The better the soil looks, the higher the sweet potato yield may not be. No matter what kind of soil, before planting sweet potatoes, you must first ridge. Why ridging first? First, sweet potatoes are planted on the ridge, and the soil layer is thick. Only when the soil layer is thick enough can sweet potatoes grow bigger.
Second, it rains heavily in summer. If the drainage is improper, it is easy to cause the sweet potato to crack. After ridging, rainwater can flow out along the bottom of the border, and the sweet potatoes planted on the back of the ridge will not be hurt by rainwater. Third, ridging planting not only drains water, but also prevents drought. Sweet potato seedlings planted on the ridge back have a longer natural water retention time because the soil thickness is higher than that planted on the flat ground. The reason is very simple.
Apply sufficient fertilizer before planting.
Although sweet potatoes are not picky about the soil, they also need base fertilizer. Generally, when people are deeply ploughing the land, they directly scatter farm manure into the land, so that when the land is ploughed, the fertilizer will be mixed with the soil, and there is no need to fertilize it when it is planted. Our family planted sweet potatoes for two years in a row, using peanut cakes, because there are many kinds of peanuts in Jiaodong, and peanut oil is processed by itself in winter. There will be a lot of peanut cakes. We don't sell them, but we keep them for sweet potato application.
Our family grows sweet potatoes because there is only about half an acre of land. For ourselves, relatives and friends to eat, we use peanut cakes as fertilizer, and the sweet potatoes that grow are particularly sweet. When planting sweet potatoes, you need to dig a small nest by hand, first bury the sweet potato seedlings, and then put peanut cakes a few centimeters away from the sweet potato seedlings. It should be noted that peanut cakes need to be ground into powder before they can be used.
After the sweet potato seedlings are buried in the ground, our routine practice is to pour a proper amount of water into the nest. After the water wets the soil, cover the surrounding soil together and press it hard, so that it can retain water for a long time and will not dry quickly. My father's practice is different from others. He didn't expose all the sweet potato leaves, but only left two or three leaves on the ground, and the other leaves were all under the soil. Dad, it takes a long time to cultivate the soil, and it is also more troublesome. I don't understand, why bury sweet potato leaves under the soil?
Dad told me that if the leaves of sweet potato seedlings are exposed, then a little water we poured is not enough for so many leaves to absorb. If it rains in a short time, there is no problem. If it doesn't rain for a long time and there is only a little water, so many leaves can't be absorbed, and it is difficult for sweet potato seedlings to survive. Burying leaves in the soil is different. These leaves no longer absorb water. Greatly improved the survival rate of sweet potato seedlings.