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Who Ate My Sweet Potato Plants?

May 20, 2010 by Jeanne

Okay, ‘fess up. Who ate my sweet potato plants?

After all the “Am I planting these right?” and questions from the spouse “Are we even going to get $16 worth of potatoes out of the $16 we spent on these root things?” I left the garden bed to be soaked with rain this week. Today was the first sunny, warm day, so I traipsed down to the fenced-in vegetable garden to check my sweet potatoes.

And half were GONE.

Not just “it keeled over and died” gone, with a little sad stem left. I mean – gone. Absent. As if I’d never planted it.

But only in the big bed. The others I’d tucked into the onion bed were all accounted for and perky. Here’s a picture of one, pretty as can be, happy and green.

But where did his friends go? Why am I missing half of my seedlings?!

So what is eating these? The garden is fenced. I checked the fence. It’s tight. No holes or tunnels dug underneath. The ground is soft enough to show footprints….Shadow’s tracks were clear, and I didn’t see deer.

Someone send Columbo. Jessica Fletcher. Monk. Yes, I want Adrian Monk here to figure out the case of “Who are my sweet potato plants?”

Now I’ve got sneak out to Lowe’s and find replacements before the spouse realizes that some critter ate $16 bucks worth of seedlings in one night. Boy, I will never hear the end of that.

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