Gardening and Sweet Potatoes

One of the things we really enjoy about living in a tropical climate is that we can garden all year long.  Most Ugandans plant according to the two rainy seasons in the year, but we have found that being close to the lake allows us to be able to plant any time of the year since we often get at least some rain even during the dry season.  Since coming back to Uganda last year, we have struggled with keeping critters out of our garden - termites, monkeys, cows, etc.  It has taken us about eight months to get some kind of produce, but the struggle was well worth it.  We just harvested our sweet potatoes a few weeks ago and ended up with about four 5-gallon bucketfuls!  Also, since we can plant anytime, we dug the potatoes, cut the stems, and replanted them in another area of our garden, all in the same day.  We have tried all kinds of sweet potato recipes from soups to breads to breakfast casseroles, and sometimes it does not even seem like we have made a dent in the pile in our storeroom!  The kids’ favorite by far has been sweet potato pancakes (the recipe is on our recipes page if you are interested in trying them).  It has also been fun sharing our American sweet potatoes with Ugandans around us since the sweet potatoes grown here are a bit different.  We even have some people that took stems to plant in their own gardens!  There are many aspects of gardening that we enjoy, and we have been thankful that we can do something we enjoy and get some good food from it too!