You may remember that I planted sweet potatoes in straw bales this year. I planted them on June 16 and that was about a month later than they should have been planted. We were late getting our straw bales ready. In the spring, I hope to buy the straw bales in March and have them ready to plant by the end of April. We’ll see how that goes!
Here is one bale planted in front of my peppers.
The sweet potatoes need at least 90 days to grow but often it takes 120 days. I had figured mid-October is when I would harvest them.
Yesterday I was watering and noticed something orange. I reached down and it was this!
I dug around in one bed and found these:
There were lots of smaller ones so I just pulled out the bigger ones to give the smaller ones room to grow. I felt around in the other beds and didn’t feel as many potatoes and the potatoes I found were smaller so I left them all alone. This was from the one plant and I planted 15 plants, one died so I have 14 left so I’m hoping this means we’ll have a good sweet potato harvest but I’m going to stay out of the rest of the beds for another month. The bales are falling apart and I’m not sure they’re even going to last another month so I may have to harvest before mid-October.
I was so excited to find all those sweet potatoes. They need to cure for about three weeks so I have them spread out in the downstairs garage which is the coolest room in the house. The room with the freeze dryer is the darkest but it stays warmer in there with the freeze dryer running so much so . . the garage it is for now.
Teri says
WOW that looks like a good harvest! How exciting! Do you put soil in the bale?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Some of the sweet potatoes were already in starter cups with soil. I didn’t realize how long it would take for the temp in the bale to come down to the lower temp so I could plant so the slips were growing enough that they needed to be potted. Some were sweet potatoes I cut up just a couple of days before planting. For those in pots, I just hollowed out a spot in the straw and put the contents of the pot in the straw (dirt and all). For those that had no soil, I hollowed out a spot in the straw about the size of my fist, put garden soil in it and stuck the potato piece in the middle. I don’t think any soil was necessary though.
Clemson (of course) has good instructions here on how to grow in straw bales.
Tee says
I did tomatoes in bales one year and it was a disaster. I must not have conditioned them well enough. I decided to skip it because I have plenty of space for a in ground garden. Just thought I would try the bales. Your harvest is great!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
My tomatoes in buckets didn’t do well this year either. Space is an issue for me so I’ll do a bit more research and see what others have had better luck with growing in bales. Thanks!