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9 things i needed to learn about sweet potatoes

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IKNEW THEY WERE ONE OF BABY’S FIRST FOODS, and one of nature’s most nutritious of all. But as a relatively novice sweet-potato grower, there were nine things–well, maybe 10 if you include that they taste great in a bowl of quick curry, above–that I had to learn for myself.

Hurrying Doesn’t Help

1. That all the mail-order providers I have used send me my “slips” (pieces of vine sprouted off their stock sweet potatoes) much too early. Yes, I may have few hard frosts after late April or early May…but the weather is by no means as settled nor the soil as warm as a sweet potato would ideally have it. I want my slips to arrive a month later than some stupid automated calculation at the growers is apparently indicating, triggering my too-soon shipment. Just say no to early delivery; hurrying doesn’t help.

D.I.Y. for Starters?

2. If I had healthy, firm stock left from the previous year—and no sign of any disease or troubles last growing season—I could technically sprout my own slips, and it may just come to that. I’d need to get some of the stored potatoes to begin to sprout in the dark, which they eventually do as you may know if you have forgotten one in the pantry. I’d plant them in the equivalent of a hotbed (whether under lights on a heat mat, or in an actual hotbed out in a coldframe outdoors). This National Gardening Association article on slip-growing is on my beside for careful study.

Storage Is No Picnic

3. On the other end of the timeline, storage is a crapshoot in the average home. After a week of curing the just-dug crop at 85 degrees and 85-90 percent humidity or thereabouts (where exactly is that perfect spot, I ask?) they want to be tucked in at 55 to 60 degrees with 85ish percent humidity.  The house in winter is hot and very dry; the basement is too cold, and so on. Tricky business.

Freezer to the Rescue

4.Cooking and freezing some of the crop at peak condition, before storage, may be a good solution to storage limitations. I prepare then freeze mashed or roasted sweet potatoes; a pureed soup with a sweet-potato base; and even this curry-in-a-hurry, top photo (but leave out the mushrooms until reheating time). Many delicious and inventive sweet potato recipes from my food-blogger friends are in the box down the page a bit farther. Do go sample.

Harvest Right on Time

5. Again on the perils of storage: I’ve learned that behaving as if these were white potatoes that can be left in the ground just a little longer as fall comes on, may sharply reduce storage life and even the flavor. Don’t wait until frost hits the vines to take your cue; mark down when you planted, and what the presumed days to maturity are for the variety (usually about 120; at least 100) and check a sample plant for readiness then. Triage: If frost beats you, cut the vines at ground level right away (to limit damage underground) and harvest promptly.

What They Like to Drink

6. Watering these guys is tricky. Overwatering is no good, and a wet year can result in poor root formation, and long, stringy sweet potatoes. They like it hot and dry once their vines have filled in and covered the ground. Particularly dicey: a serious wet spell in the month before harvest, and big rains after dry spells late in the growing, which can cause splitting and cracking (as with various other crops). Next year I must try to better approximate what they apparently want: less frequent deep waterings, allowing the soil to dry down 6 inches or more before watering again.

They’re Overly Ambitious

7. Letting these lusty vines spread out and root in along the way as they please might look like a certain bumper crop’s in store—but it doesn’t work that way here. I suppose if you had more frost-free months than I do that would be OK to let them stray a bit, but I need to “tell” the plants to concentrate their efforts and make good-sized potatoes—not run and run and run, setting down and starting to make more young plants and small potatoes far from the parent plant. To that end…

Black Plastic Helps

8. …Black plastic does more to help a Northern grower like myself heat up the soil to the warmth that sweet potatoes like. It can also keep the vines from rooting in everywhere (as can cultivating between rows). Lay it down as early as possible for maximum early warming.

Please Don’t Eat the Ornamentals

9. Technically you can eat your ornamental sweet potato vine’s “potatoes,” but don’t. This last fact I learned because readers who wrote in to ask me about it, and I did some homework: Yes, the Ipomoea batatas we grow for show—like ‘Blackie’ with purple leaves or ‘Margarita’ with golden ones, and all their cousins—is the same genus and species as ‘Beauregard’ or ‘Jewel.’ But remember this: It was probably treated in the nursery where it was propagated with one or more of a number of chemicals that are not intended for vegetable-growing use. (Apparently they also don’t taste anywhere as good as the vegetable-garden varieties, even without the nasty dose of chemicals.)

Sweet-Potato Deliciousness: The Recipes

  • Todd and Diane, White On Rice Couple: Sweet Potato Molasses Cookies
  • Nicole from Pinch My Salt: Cumin-Scented Sweet Potato Hash
  • Michelle at Cooking Channel: Sweet Potato Cupcakes With Marshmallow Topping
  • Kirsten at Food Network: Sweet Potato Thanksgiving Sides
  • Jessica at Food2: Sweet Potato Gnocchi
  • Liz at Healthy Eats: Sweet Potatoes 5 Ways
  • Caroline from The Wright Recipes: Sweet Potato Galette
  • Paige at The Sister Project: Sweet Potatoes on the Savory Side

What’s a Fall Fest?

FALL FEST IS A cross-blog recipe and tip swap–and you’re invited to participate. Simply post your link or recipe or idea in the comments below my post, and also on the blogs of the other participants listed in the recipe links box just above.

Want more information on how it all works? Get the details, including our shift into Fall Fest after many weeks of Summer Fest, with a new logo but the same recipe-sharing routine). We’re continuing right into the Thanksgiving holiday.

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33 comments
November 17, 2010

comments

  1. Jill says

    April 13, 2013 at 10:35 am

    Do you have any suggestions for best companions for sweet potatoes AND anything that should stay away from them-thanks!

    Reply
    • margaret says

      April 14, 2013 at 6:40 am

      Hi, Jill. They are very ambitious growers, whose foliage by high summer will totally fill a bed, so I don’t think that other plants in the same bed will like the experience. :) My main issues with them is that their foliage is VERY attractive to woodchucks and rabbits (and I am in a rural area where such creatures like to visit). To get the best yield many Northern growers swear by black plastic as a “mulch” (which warms the soil and also prevents the vines from rooting multiple times as they scramble around). Like this. Another reason other crops might not love the situation.

      Reply
  2. tropaeolum says

    May 15, 2013 at 1:42 pm

    I started growing sweet potatoes in 2010 after I received some white sweet potatoes as a gift. I had never had a white sweet potato before and I loved them. They’re hard to find in a store, so I grow some each year and save a few tubers for planting the next spring.

    This year might be a struggle because the person storing my sweets did not understand that they do not like cold temperatures. Here’s hoping that mine come through because I don’t want to lose my stock of white sweets (and the story behind them).

    Reply
  3. TR says

    April 30, 2014 at 11:05 am

    I’m currently trying to figure out how to protect my sweetpotatos from voles. Baited traps don’t work because the voles go underground to feed on the tubers. I lost an entire crop of sweet potatoes, perhaps 50# worth, on my new garden from voles eating every last tuber. The vines above showed no sign of the chomping going on underground except perhaps a bit of wilting sometimes. Its very disheartening to go digup your taters only to find big holes in the ground where they were. Sometimes’ I’d find two ends of a tater with the middle all eaten out. A couple times, I inadvertantly speared voles whilst digging for taters. Any thoughts are well appreciated. Burying metal barriers isnt exactly what I call a sustainable approach and filling the bed with sharp rocks as the Ag extension agent here recommends will cause me to slice up my fingers while digging up the taters. I can tell you one thing: I have a welcome mat out for snakes. Snakes are the only predators I know of that actually go down into the tunels where the voles are. Owls, foxes, and cats just arent effective predators of voles in my opinion. Any ideas on creating overwintering habitat/structures for snakes?

    Reply
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I’VE FOLLOWED a vegetarian diet for decades, but it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I mastered a really good vegetable soup. Now I’m learning variations on vegetable-based soups, plus ones with beans and even ideas for mushroom soups, too–all thanks to Alexandra Stafford and these recipes. (Stream it below, read the transcript or subscribe free.)

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mad gardener, nature addict, award-winning writer & podcaster, rural resident, corporate dropout, creator of awaytogarden dot com and matching book.

Instagram post 2190297402408409324_444552553 Snow day. To be followed by a snow night. #awaytogarden #wavehillchairs
Instagram post 2177779417009402040_444552553 No matter that it was 11F and 17F on mornings this week; my lifelong companions and I are all tucked in, each in our respective offseason spots. Three giant pots of #cliviaminiata that are actually pieces of my long-gone grandmother’s original plant from many, many decades ago, love the offseason bright cold of the mudroom, and get no water till around the new year or so. They need a chill (under 50 but above 35) for about 40 days to trigger timely bloom in late winter/early spring (without it they will bloom whenever, later, like June or even summer). The #alocasia reacts to the cold of the mudroom by shutting down and going dormant and leafless, and then I’ll let it sleep till late winter, when I give it a drink to see if it awakens. That one sleeps and wakes on its own timetable because I do not have a proper spot for it (ideally warm, like 60 or 65 at least, and humid and bright...no can do the humid part here). We have been together probably 10 years anyhow, despite my shortcomings as a #plantparent . #alocasiaamazonica #clivias #houseplantsofinstagram #houseplants #awaytogarden
Instagram post 2172580656557749859_444552553 Gardener: “I raked all the leaves!” Nature: “Oh, really?” (Cue sound of demonic laughter from on high.)
Instagram post 2170506606641504178_444552553 I wanna tell you how it’s gonna be You’re gonna give your love to me I wanna love you night and day You know my love will not fade away Not fade away Nope. Not this #cotinus leaf’s fiery hot love at least. Like the 1957 #buddyholly song I first heard by #therollingstones in 1964, it keeps going. #awaytogarden #fallfoliage2019 #cotinusgrace #notfadeaway
Instagram post 2168987273989949378_444552553 “Jack Frost nipping at your, er, geraniums...” And here it comes.
Instagram post 2166837817953503284_444552553 Constant companions: If you want to keep good company all winter, grow some good keepers. My house is stuffed with piles of #cucurbita awaiting their time in the oven or soup kettle. Each one is a character, distinctive. On one chair in the mudroom two close cousins in #cucurbitamoschata — the horse collar-shaped one called ‘Tromboncino’ or ‘Tromboncino Rampicante’ snuggles with some ‘Butternut.’ The ‘Tromboncino’ are better eaten green and small as #zucchini but I can’t resist their eventual mad size and shape, big enough to wear around your neck. I use their meat for enriching vegetable stock; the ‘Butternut’ are far more rich and delicious. Seed respectively from sandhillpreservation.com #sandhillpreservationcenter and @turtle_tree_seed (whose ‘Butternut,’ selected for “lastingness” for decades, will keep and keep into next spring or more). #wintersquash #awaytogarden #goodkeeper #cucurbitaceae
Instagram post 2162565040882902064_444552553 Furry fall friend: I look forward to crossing paths with this woolly caterpillar of the #giantleopardmoth this time of year, when its fiery intersegmental bands and plush coat seem to be just the right autumn-into-winter look. Miraculously this tiny animal will overwinter in a woodpile or in the leaf litter, even here in the North, building up a concentration of antifreeze (glycerol I think?) in its cells before the worst weather begins to avoid disaster. (Reminds me of the super-hardy #woodfrog who does similarly. Such heroes.) Swipe to see a beat-up pic of the adult moth, tattered with scales missing at its wing margins, but still dramatic. Unlike various spine-covered caterpillars that can sting you, this one’s hairs (or setae) won’t, but he will roll up tight if touched, in self-defense. I am in awe of such complex strategies of survival, I am. #mothsofinstagram #caterpillars #awaytogarden #hypercompescribonia #hypercompe
Instagram post 2161992098629435854_444552553 Beans are life. I mean, not only do I live on them daily (as I have as a vegetarian for 40+ years) but each one is a seed, a living embryo, a distinct and gorgeous little DNA miracle. I have been inspired by the hashtag #31daysofbeans by @lukasvolger lately, loving watching someone unknown to me (um, who shares my oatmeal thing too apparently...also see his #28daysofoatmeal) dish up the #phaseolus. We both admire bean ambassador Steve Sando @rancho_gordo and this photo might be my fave bean of all that I “met” via Steve years back, big and flat and chestnutty ‘Christmas Lima.’ My advice: don’t wait till Dec. 25 to dig in.
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Welcome! I’m Margaret Roach, a leading garden writer for 25 years—at ‘Martha Stewart Living,’ ‘Newsday,’ and in three books. I host a public-radio podcast; I also lecture, plus hold tours at my 2.3-acre Hudson Valley (NY) Zone 5B garden, and always say no to chemicals and yes to great plants.

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