Sweet Potatoes

My sweet potatoes are doing great and making me very happy! The other day I was watching a video of someone who had planted their sweet potatoes several weeks before I did. They’re an expert and mine actually look like they’re farther along. Of course, the only thing that matters is the end result and there’s a lot that can go wrong with bugs, drought or an early frost since I’m going to need the time right up until the average first frost for mine to be ready.

I can’t remember exactly but I ordered 10 sweet potato plants from Bake Creek. I had ordered 5 Myanmar Purple and 5 Pumpkin Yam plants. The instructions I read for planting in straw bales said to plant three plants per bale. I have four bales and only had 10 plants but I had two sweet potatoes in the house that had each sprouted a few tiny little leaves so I cut that part off and stuck it in a bale and they seem to be doing fine.

I went by Natural Grocer and bought one each of three different kinds of sweet potatoes.

Also, I decided I can buy strawberries easily here. There are several berry farms around so I pulled out my strawberries (obviously not all of them) and planted a few leftover sprouted potatoes and one sweet potato.

I left the three potatoes from Natural Grocer in a warm, darkish spot in the kitchen hoping they would sprout. They never really did much, mainly because they needed more time, but they looked like they were thinking about sprouting so I put one whole potato in th spot with the strawberries I accidentally left, and the other potatoes and it’s doing great.

I found spots in two potato bags that looked like they had room to spare so I put one whole sweet potato in each of those spots. I’m figuring the potatoes will be done by mid to late July and the sweet potatoes need until mid-October so hopefully I’ll have all the potatoes out of the way and the one sweet potato in each bag can have all the room it needs. We’ll see.

I read that I should get 5 – 6 sweet potatoes per plant. If it works out that way, I could get 75 to 90 sweet potatoes. I’d be happy if I got 30 which would mean I got two potatoes for every one I planted but when you figure I spent $30 on plants, $24 on straw bales, at least $10 on fertilizer, I should hope for at least 40 sweet potatoes. Based on spending $64, not to mention the water, I could buy about 70 sweet potatoes at Walmart but . . it’s more fun to grow your own. Also, if I had thought about this earlier, and I will next year if it works, I could have grown my own plants and for probably 5 sweet potatoes, easily sprouted 20 plants.

It’s all a learning and fun experience.