The Verde Thumbs, a Verde Valley gardening club, celebrated its 14th birthday on April 15 with a meeting discussing spring gardening and sweet potatoes.
Founded in April 2009, the club’s creation was spearheaded by Janice Montgomery. She had been in a garden club while living in Scottsdale, and after moving to Cottonwood she thought the community needed a gardening club as well.
Club members discuss everything from soil preparation to the right times of the year to plant. Once their gardens are growing, they talk about insect and disease control. Other topics include preserving food, seed saving and companion planting.
Verde Thumbs meetings average around 30 to 45 people in attendance, and the club’s Facebook group has over 800 members. Montgomery noted that the group is a great place for people to get local information, as opposed to random advice from the internet that is not relevant to the Verde Valley.
“This has been one of the best experiences I have ever had,” Montgomery said. “So many people have come to the monthly meetings and shared their frustrations and successes. Many wonderful friendships have been formed through the club.”
Of the club’s nine original members, five are still a part of the club and were present at the April 15 meeting.
The club’s mission is to teach and share sustainable techniques for growing vegetables and fruit. Montgomery also stressed the importance of organic gardening. She mentioned that there is a class of commercial sprays that are killing the bees needed for pollination. If you don’t have bees, you lose your crop.
“I’m very passionate about gardening organically and not using these terrible sprays,” Montgomery said.
The club also runs the Verde Valley seed library, which distributes free seeds to the public.
“The whole concept of seed saving has been very, very important,” Montgomery said. “It’s important because of all the genetically engineered food that’s out there now.” She even started teaching seed saving classes in her own backyard.
The seed library was born in 2015 after Montgomery and Richard Sidy attended the First International Seed Library Conference in Tucson. They then presented the idea to the club and the seed library opened in September 2015 with over 100 people checking out seeds.
The mission of the seed library is to provide a variety of free seeds appropriate for growing in the Verde Valley. Gardeners are invited to grow, save and return seeds that are adapted to this area.
In addition to celebrating the club’s birthday, the meeting’s discussion focused primarily on growing and harvesting sweet potatoes.
Montgomery pointed out that sweet potatoes love the climate in Cottonwood, even the hot summers. They don’t have any insect problems and are generally disease-free. Ground squirrels are also very enthusiastic about them, so she recommended putting a fence around them to protect them.
Montgomery taught the club how to grow a sweet potato slip for planting. Choose a tuber that has a lot of eyes and suspend the potato in water, using toothpicks to keep just the bottom third submerged. Sprouts will grow from the eyes. When the sprouts are about 4 inches long, remove them from the main tuber and place the bottom inch in a jar of water. The sprouts are known as slips. Once these slips form a good root system they are ready to be planted in loose, fertile soil.
When harvesting sweet potatoes, use a spading fork, not a shovel, and dig about a foot away from the vine. The skin is very tender and can be damaged. Gently lift them and brush off the dirt rather than washing them. Sweet potatoes need to be cured or they will not be sweet. Montgomery advised putting them somewhere out of the sun and turning them over every day so they can dry evenly, allowing the starch in the root to turn to sugar.
Montgomery shared that the first time she and her son grew sweet potatoes, they harvested 28 pounds from just three plants.
The next Verde Thumbs meeting will be held on Saturday, May 20, at 10 a.m. The next seed library exchange will take place on Saturday, April 22, at 11 a.m.
