Yesterday I harvested the rest of the sweet potatoes. I wasn’t terribly impressed with growing sweet potatoes in the straw bales. There were some really weird shaped potatoes. I had watched several videos of others who grew them in bales and they had the same weird shaped potatoes but then a few had decent sweet potatoes.
I had four straw bales that I planted potato slips in and I ended up with a sweet potato that I had left on the counter . . meant to cook it and didn’t, and it sprouted so I stuck it in one of my raised beds. It was the only thing I planted in one of the 4 x 4 raised beds and that bed was full of sweet potatoes. They were big, they were tasty. From that one potato, I got 23 nice size potatoes. The potato I had planted was one I bought at Natural Grocer. All the others were slips I got from Rare Seeds/Baker Creek. One was Myanmar Purple and one was Pumpkin Yams. I had 10 Baker Creek slips; 8 went into the straw bales and 2 went into grow bags. As sweet potatoes do, they all produced runners that went everywhere. The runners that made into other raised beds (and almost took them over) actually produced decent potatoes but all that were still in the straw bales are long, skinny and weird. The two in grow bags did ok but they may have had too much shade.
Totally, I have 49 pounds of sweet potatoes. I had harvested 12 pounds early, then 15 pounds from two grow bags and today I pulled out 22 pounds from the straw bales. I’m happy with what I got but wish more of them were “normal” potatoes and not these weird shapes.
This one has to be the weirdest of them all. It looks like a colon. That’s one potato! Can I eat this one? I don’t know.
I will use the weird ones in recipes and save the normal ones for baking potatoes.
Next year, I will use some grow bags and at least one raised bed, maybe two for growing sweet potatoes.
BFromM says
That’s one very strange shaped potato! I would definitely not want to eat that one as a baked sweet potato!
Tracy says
–I wonder if the straw in your bales was too tightly baled. Those weirdly shaped tubers may have had to muscle their way through some densely packed straw. I know with hay bales there can be a difference in density from bale to bale and between different cuts during the season. They are “different” though, once you slice them up and cook them, I am sure they’ll be tasty.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
We “conditioned” it for over a month before we planted and checked it with my hand to make sure it was loose enough and I think it was ok. I’m thinking the they were meeting so little resistance that the long skinny ones just kept growing straight but I have no idea. I did see quite a few videos with straw bale sweet potatoes and they all had weird shaped ones. Many of mine look more like carrots than sweet potatoes.
PamO says
Sweet potatoes are often shaped weirdly. I prefer to grow butternut squash. They grow on top of the ground and their “skin” is already hardened.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I’ve grown sweet potatoes for many years and often get a few that are weird but the ones that grew in the straw were pretty much all weird where I had no totally weird ones in the ground. I am growing Thelma Sanders squash next year. That one is known as “above grown sweet potato” because it tastes so much like a sweet potato. Now that we like eating the sweet potato leaves so much, I’ll keep growing those too.
Also, our favorite way to eat sweet potatoes is baked and since the squash has to be cleaned out, it just isn’t the same , , at least in appearance.
We’ll also grow several kinds of pumpkins and the sugar pumpkins taste very similar to sweet potatoes but again, not the same appearance for serving baked potatoes.
Sandi B says
That’s funny! At first glance, I thought it was an ad for a colon something!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I know! That’s what I thought when I pulled it out. Kinda gross looking but hey . . it’s a purple sweet potato and I’m happy to have it.
Susan says
Huh. Those are weird shapes, and a lot of energy seems wasted on skinny bits, but if they taste fine, I guess it’s all good. I wonder how it would be with less space top to bottom to grow. Probably just spread out to the sides then. LOL Thanks for posting the results of your experiments.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I wondered about that too. The bales start out tall but by the time I got the potatoes out, they were only about 10″ tall. Since they all did so much better in dirt, I’m going to go that route next time.
Twyla says
Those weird shaped sweet potatoes will be just fine fried. I add mine to russet potatoes when frying sometimes. Now I want a skillet full of my grandmother’s sweet potatoes, butter, sugar cook to a syrup almost put in your planks of sweet potatoes and cook them up. She loved sugar so that is how she cooked hers. Good memory. Her tea was like syrup pouring of pitcher.lol
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I would have liked eating at your grandma’s! 🙂
Rebecca says
..I thought of a kielbasa!
There are some very long tails on some of those! I’m not sure what you can do with long skinnies, but the rounder parts should look fine when you cut them up.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Yes, a lot of those tails will be scrubbed and then cooked up in the dogs’ food. I will scrape off the skin and then cook those skinny tails for the dogs’ food. Dogs generally love sweet potatoes.