Dear Helen: Are sweet potatoes the same as yams? I’m very fond of them and have grown them in the past, but I’ve never been certain just which one they are. Labels in stores are sometimes confusing too.
sa国际传媒
I am often asked this question. Gardeners who grow their own sweet potatoes sometimes still wonder whether the root vegetables they have grown are the same as yams.
Perhaps because sweet potatoes (yams?) have been part of recent holiday meals, some of my friends have developed a curiosity over this naming issue. The sudden appearance of purple sweet potatoes in one of the local health food stores has also given rise to the confusion over naming the vegetable. Are these novelty roots yams or sweet potatoes or are they the same thing?
The two are not the same. They belong to different plant families and are grown in different parts of the world.
Yams are grown in tropical places, mainly Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean. The sweet potato is a New World root vegetable. There are hundreds of varieties and strains of those varieties, including various purple types. Any that are sold here as “yams” are almost surely sweet potatoes.
Varieties with dusky purple skins and deep, vibrant purple flesh ae grown in California and North Carolina. These sweet potatoes are not common, but they have been around for a long time. Growers in California have been encouraged to grow them as an unusual “niche” crop that offers elevated health benefits. The purple sweet potatoes I found in a local health food store are almost surely from California.
Dear Helen: As we’ve begun deciding as a family what vegetables to grow this year, we have, with regret, (almost) decided against growing carrots. For the past two growing seasons, they have been ruined by black tunnelling left by carrot rust fly larvae feeding. A neighbour has told me that seeding green onions between closely spaced rows of seeded carrots will mask the carrot scent that attracts the flies to lay eggs at the bases of the emerging and young carrot plants. Sounds like a promising plan. Do you think it would work?
R.L.
It is true that the strong scent of onions can, in some situations, mask the carrot scent enough to deter carrot flies from laying eggs in its usual target plantings. This dual planting worked for me in one of my Okanagan gardens, where the carrot rust fly populations were minimal. Here, at least in my garden’s location, the technique proved ineffective.
Populations of the pest are typically spotty. People gardening in areas not far from me have never had a rust fly problem in their unprotected carrots. Other gardeners I’ve spoken with have stopped growing carrots because of rust fly damage. They feel it’s too much trouble to place an insect barrier cover over their plantings. Actually, it’s quite simple. The cover makes for close to trouble-free growing of clean carrots.
It’s easy to hold the sides of a lightweight floating row cover down with boards, or by tucking them securely into the soil, leaving enough slack for the plant tops to develop. I lift the cover off once or twice to weed and thin. Only a small portion needs lifting to harvest. Apart from that, watering in dry weather is all that’s needed.
Be aware that vulnerable crops can grow without pest visitations for years before being “discovered” and damaged. I grew bulb onions uncovered for over 20 years in my current garden with no problem. Then one year the planting started off fine and then the tops all fell over. There were onion fly maggots in every bulb.
The same is true of the leaf miners that create tunneling in the foliage of beets and spinach. I cover all the vulnerable crops now — the carrots, onions, beets and spinach.
Note to readers. In a fast and harrowing upgrade from my old computer system to a new one over the holidays, all the emails stored in the old program were lost. As well as all the personal mail, I know there were some garden events and gardening questions among them. Please re-send any recently sent notes to the address below. And note that there is no “t” in the middle of Chesnut. Think of me as a different kind of nut.
