Not too long ago, we talked about different ways to get sweet potatoes started but I’ll go over it again here just to have all the info in one post (more for myself than for anyone else). Last year I ordered sweet potato slips and I think I paid about $2 for each one and a couple of them didn’t survive. I planted them – some in raised beds, some in grow bags and some in straw bales. I got about equal results from all three planting locations. But, there was one plant that produced more than any other potato I planted. It could have been the type potato . . I have no idea. I had some organic sweet potatoes in the house that we would cook and eat. One had been left a little too long and it sprouted. I had a spot in a raised bed where a pepper plant had died so I went out, dug out the dead plant, stuck the entire sweet potato in the hole, covered it up and left it alone. I figured I would either throw it in the compost bin or plant it. If it produced, great; if not, it was the same as composting it.
Before I ever came close to harvesting potatoes from the other plants, I walked by that raised bed one day and saw something orange. I reached down to pick it up and it was a sweet potato! It was large and ready to be baked! That one potato I planted filled a 4′ x 4′ raised bed and we most have gotten 30 nice size potatoes. I would go out and dig up potatoes as I wanted to cook them but, for the most part, just left them all in the ground til the tops started dying back.
When I did harvest all the potatoes, there were plenty of small ones that hadn’t had time to mature. I saved those too. We shredded cardboard and put that in boxes and stored our sweet potatoes in there, in a corner of the downstairs garage. The garage is air conditioned and heated and has no windows and two sides of it are basement walls so it stays nice and cool and not too damp. I haven’t had any potatoes go bad and we’re still eating them. The little scrawny potatoes that were too small or too twisted to eat, I put in the boxes with the good potatoes, knowing I would use those to start new plants this year. Several times, Vince has said “Do you want me to throw those potatoes out?” I would tell him . . no . . that’s going to be our seeds for the spring garden.
Sometime before March 1, I stuck some of those little potatoes in a couple of tubs of soil.
I went out today and retrieved the ones that had the most roots/sprouts and planted them.
I was so happy to see all those roots and sprouts.
This one has leaves on it! We enjoyed the leaves as much as we did the potatoes themselves. I freeze dried some and now that we know how well they rehydrate and cook up, we’ll be freeze drying a lot more this year.
I planted three starts in each of two 30 gallon grow bags.
Sweet potatoes are one of the things I’m most excited about this year. It was so easy to grow enough sweet potatoes to last us almost through the year. I think we will run out before these are ready to harvest. It takes about 120 days for them to be a good size so I’m counting on mid-August before we get a good harvest but by July 1, I may be able to start digging around and finding a few that are large enough to bake.
I’m going to be planting more in raised beds and in grow bags. I’m not using straw bales this year simply because I’ve mentioned to Vince several times that I need bales and . . it hasn’t happened. I need to try to do the things I can do on my own without him having to stop what he’s doing and help me so . . we’ll leave off the straw bales this year.
katie says
The last time I got sweet potatoes I peeled them and cut them into coins. Threw them in to my pan when making my morning bacon and fried them up. So yummy.
Friendly Helen! says
Mmmm, love sweet taters!
Rosalie says
Judy, do you have to keep adding dirt to the pots like with white potatoes?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
If you’re asking about mounding or hilling, no. I generally plant only determinate potatoes and they grow in one layer so hilling or mounding isn’t needed.
SORRY – I thought you were asking about the potatoes in bags. For sweet potatoes, I have never mounded the dirt up. Not sure if I’m supposed to or not.
Rosalie says
I don’t know how to tell if a potato is determinate. I’ll give it a try.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
The only way I know to tell is to google it. Yukon golds are determinate. That’s about all I know for sure. I have to google it otherwise but as far as seed potatoes, I rarely come across an indeterminate variety. I wonder if most of the older varieties were indeterminate because I remember my grandpa and my dad mounding up dirt around them so I always thought you had to do that with all potatoes.
Susan says
And you’re saving $2 per start! That was a real blessing to find out how well that potato did. I love sweet potatoes, or even yams, but sweet potatoes better. I like them with salt/pepper/butter or adding cinnamon and sugar. I like them in pie, air fries, mashed, just any old way, as long as their peeled, can’t have peelings of anything. I might try some in our bed out back that Paul built two years ago. He didn’t have time with his job for gardening last year, but the potatoes wouldn’t need much care, even watering if our rains continue the way they have the last year. Thanks for the information! Do you do any additional fertilizing over the summer?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Beware – the vines will grow from your house to mine but the leaves are edible and quite yummy. Not sure if you can eat those kinds of greens but they are my favorite green. I can saute them with sausage but my favorite way is to make meatballs and roll them up in the leaves, then pour a sauce – either marinara to make Vince happy or a cream sauce and then bake them. I can pretty much scrape all the red sauce off the entire little packet and they’re good. The leaves freeze dry well and the little meatball roll ups freeze well.
Becky says
If you are not sure you can eat the sweet potato greens why do you say you eat them?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I am 100% sure *I* can eat the leaves. The friend, to whom I was responding, has some dietary limitations and I wasn’t sure if *SHE* could eat the leaves! If you would like more information regarding whether sweet potato leaves are edible, simply google “are sweet potato leaves edible” and you will find lots of info about their nutritional value.