Green onion years (5) The farm work I did: growing sweet potatoes

In hilly areas with few fields and more soil, sweet potatoes are very important as a crop second only to rice, but their status is second only to rice, but the yield per mu is several times that of rice. Our sweet potatoes there are mainly pale yellow skin white hearts, and there are few red skin white hearts and red skin yellow hearts, which are small in production and only as a supplement.

First, cut and insert. Sweet potatoes belong to the cuttings, as long as the roots with leaf buds are inserted into the soil, they can produce branches and leaves. In early summer, when it rains, we cut back the vines that grow sweet potatoes (used as seedlings), cut off the branches along the vines, about ten centimeters, and tie them into bundles according to the amount of hand. It was raining, and the land that had been prepared before was soaking wet, so we put on our coats, put on buckets, and set off with a basket full of sweet potato seedlings, digging a hole with a straw hoe (a small iron hoe dedicated to planting seedlings), burying the sweet potato seedlings, and the first process was completed.

2. Inter-soil management. Sweet potato seedlings into the soil root, grow very fast, its growth period has three things to do, one is to loosen the soil hoe grass, loose soil is to make it quickly absorb water and nutrients, hoe grass is to reduce its growth period of nutritional competitors, weeds survival and plundering ability is too strong; the second is fertilization, before there was no fertilizer, there is rarely used chemical fertilizer, we all use soil fertilizer, must be on a sunny day, the soil fertilizer is buried on the edge of the sweet potato, waiting for the rain to slowly immerse; the third is to turn the vine, turning the vine is to straighten out the messy vine, straightened out. Sweet potato vines grow longer and longer, and are crawling, each branch can fall to the ground to grow small sweet potatoes, if allowed to run rampant, the yield of the main crab is greatly affected. It takes at least twice to turn the vine, in addition to increasing the main yield, it is also very easy to cut the vine when harvesting sweet potatoes.

Third, harvest. Digging sweet potatoes is the early winter season, and basically after dressing up the late rice, you will start harvesting sweet potatoes. Sweet potato vines are long and heavy at this time, and the vines must be cut first, picked up in bundles, dried on the fields where the late rice has been harvested, and hung on the door beams in front of the house, which is a starch-rich plant, and after drying, it is mainly used as the main food for pigs, cattle and sheep in the winter. After the sweet potato vine is cut, a digging hoe (a relatively flat iron hoe) is dug down at 5 cm of the root and a whole sweet potato is pulled out, sometimes there are three or four sweet potatoes in a row, and sometimes a large piggyback with several small ones. Rural soil is generally gradient, when digging sweet potatoes, remember to dig from a high place, one is to evenize the soil as much as possible, and the other is to provide even land resources for the next step of planting crops. After the sweet potatoes are dug up, they are stored in the cellar, which is on the slope of the small soil

Prototype of the earthen cellar

The small hole opened on the road below, warm in winter and cool in summer. After the sweet potatoes are harvested, the roots are cleaned and placed in the cellar until the turn of the spring and summer of the following year.

Fourth, deep processing. Sweet potatoes are rich in starch, and the first processed product is to make sweet potato flour, which is a delicacy that is eaten from north to south, and is popular with all ages. The raw sweet potatoes are washed and beaten into a pulp, washed and filtered with water to precipitate into the original sweet potato powder, after which it can be dried into powder, and the sweet potato powder is also continued to be made into sweet potato vermicelli or sweet potato powder chips by adding alum, boiling, vermicelli and tools, which is regarded as a delicacy on the table. Sweet potatoes are processed into a variety of dry food, cellar sweet potatoes have the risk of corruption, we used the warm winter sun at that time, the sweet potatoes cut into silk, chopped into rice to dry, you can store for a long time, mixed into rice when cooking, greatly increasing the amount of rice; the third is a variety of snacks. Sweet potatoes because of starch saccharification, after processing the taste is very sweet, the country industrious people cook the sweet potatoes well steamed, or made into dried sweet potatoes, or mixed with orange peel, sesame seeds through the sun to make sweet potato chips, fried in oil, crisp and delicious; the fourth is extended existence. Sweet potatoes can be fermented and boiled into sweet potato wine and smelted to produce sweet potato sugar.