Re: sweet potato question

littlejo 4/24/2012, 10:33 am

I don't know if that would work or not. Some varieties of sw. potatoes bear potatoes right under the slip, usually about 3 potatoes. Others send out long roots and will bear far away from the slips. This would be a way to contain the potatoes, but you prob won't get as much as planting in the ground.

4 x 3 potatoes each = 12. Would 12 sw. potatoes fit in the bag? They would prob. be smaller due to space constraints.

Jo

Bobbi 4/24/2012, 7:26 pm

Thanks Jo, your comment was very helpful. Yes, 12 sweet potatoes would fit in the bag as it is quite deep. Like you mentioned, it just depends on what direction they decide to take and I am rooting two sweet potatoes that look somewhat different. Maybe I will just give it a try and report back at the end of the summer with what the results, if any, were. Hopefully I will have enough shoots to try in my SFG so I can compare the results.

littlejo 4/24/2012, 11:27 pm

I planted slips from a grocery sw. potato last yr. (They had a just regular taste, nothing special)

I planted in MM, and the flavor was improved so much, and they were very sweet. I don't know if it was the MM, or if it was cause we grew it ourselves.

Jo

Reikifarm7 5/22/2012, 5:31 pm

I'm so inspired by your sweet potato pics. Thanks, Squat, for taking the time to document your harvest. Your garden is beautiful. I wasn't going to bother to ask about MMM but now I have to. But first I"m going out to the garden and to "ridge up" my sweet potato area by the fence.

LittleGardener 7/7/2013, 11:29 pm

Having now read no less than 4 threads here on growing yummy sweet potatoes, I realized that tho (this lot has more darn! rocks) than soil, & not strong enuf to drive the shovel thru them, so am running out of DEEP-enuf pots to grow things in. But when I got to page 5 in this one, realized a box can be built from bricks laying around. - There's 12 Very Happy

happy little rooted slips in the window sill eagerly awaiting their new home, & by golly they will have it pronto! bounce

Thanks for all the wonderful Picturesque flower

suggestions here. Gardening is so exciting! cheers

cheyannarach 7/8/2013, 2:49 pm

It is amazing what you can grow when you think outside the box! I did sweet potatoes in an old cast iron tub last year, my kids picked them too early though.

audrey.jeanne.roberts 7/9/2013, 2:37 am

Well... I had sweet potatoes go nuts on me in my pantry and I just stuck them in the ground. Now that I've read what I was supposed to do, I'll have to report on what happened with my non-approved method, LOL!

They're in two bunches, the early planting is growing well (2 yams) and is just a couple of square feet of vines. The late planting went in last week or so and is popping up through the wood chips I have for mulch.

I LOVE sweet potatoes - my mouth is watering thinking of trying several of the recipes you guys have included in this post!
Audrey

**sanderson** 7/9/2013, 3:33 am

Audrey, Is it too late for me to buy a couple of sweet potatoes, grow slips and plant them? Put the potatoes in a cupboard? Six or 12" deep mix? two per square?

Thanks, S Anderson

audrey.jeanne.roberts 7/9/2013, 1:15 pm

I am afraid I have no answers! We don't get our first freeze generally until the end of November (last year it was the beginning of the month - drat!)

So even planting now I'll have 4 months of warm temps, the first three of them quite hot temps. I would think it would depend on where you are.

good luck and I hope someone who actually knows something can chime in!
aj

**sanderson** 7/9/2013, 4:21 pm

Hi Audrey, Fresno here! I was just wondering if I could give it a shot.

yolos 7/9/2013, 8:35 pm

Sanderson, I do not know about your weather so I cannot say either way whether you can plant them now. But bear in mind that it takes at least 4 to 6 weeks to grow a slip ready to plant. It took mine 3 months before they were ready to plant (Beauregard variety are notoriously slow to sprout). Also, depending on the variety that you plant, it takes between 90 - 120 days to mature.

So, if you assume 4 weeks for slips, then 90 days for growth to harvest that puts the earliest harvest time about 4 months or about Nov 15. If you assume 6 weeks for slips, then 120 days for growth to harvest, that puts the harvest at 5 1/2 months before harvest or Dec 30.

So look at your winter and make a decision about planting them. If you can find transplants, that would speed up your harvest deadline.

Also, they need plenty of room for the vines. I planted mine in a 4 x 8 bed and ended up putting in a 5 foot trellis on one side and the other 3 sides, I used a 2 foot high barrier to keep the vines contained. The following bed was planted 30 days ago.
sweet potato question - Page 5 Sweet_10

**sanderson** 7/9/2013, 9:07 pm

Yolos, Nice reply. In fact, I "cut and pasted" your reply to a Word doc. It will go into the binder I am building. Very Happy

FamilyGardening 7/10/2013, 2:35 am

we have two growing in our green house.....not suppose to grow them here in the PNW because of our cool weather....ha!....we shall see Razz

happy gardening
rose

murarrie25 7/19/2013, 12:48 am

Growing on a trellis or next to a fence is a good idea i read that if they touch the ground and re root that will effect production of sweet potatoes .The last sweet potatoes i harvested the best where those the vine was on the fence .

littlejo 7/19/2013, 10:09 pm

sanderson wrote:Audrey, Is it too late for me to buy a couple of sweet potatoes, grow slips and plant them? Put the potatoes in a cupboard? Six or 12" deep mix? two per square?

Thanks, S Anderson

Sanderson, did you try starting sw.potatoes? If you put the potato in a very hot situation, it will sprout easier/quicker. Maybe put in a pot of damp peat moss and put pot in a lg garbage bag, leave a small opening at top of pot, the sprouts will find the sun. Set in full sun and don't let it go dry.
After sprouts are started, put black plastic over planting area, this will get the soil real hot, sw. potatoes like it hot. Plant in holes in the plastic, if you are getting a frost before you think they are finished, just tent them and they will continue growing.
Sw.potatoes don't actually need 100 days, here is a site that explains the heat units required. Jo

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/pages/sweetpotato_catalog.html

**sanderson** 7/20/2013, 3:11 am

Littlejo, No I didn't. But now that I have read [and bookmarked] the article, I may give it a try. Nothing tried, nothing gained. Thank you

sceleste54 7/20/2013, 3:18 pm

Just have to jump in here and remind people that you CAN eat the new shoots/leaves of the sweet potato, both raw and cooked. Even if you don't have enough time to grow a crop of the tubers you can still make use of the plant.

http://energyfarms.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/archive-eating-sweet-potato-leaves/

**sanderson** 2/17/2014, 2:55 pm

Any one grow sweet potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket? Would I plant just one slip or two?

audrey.jeanne.roberts 2/17/2014, 8:42 pm

I might try 2 slips each towards the outer sides of the bucket. I'm going to see what I can find around here to plant them in. I have a spot in my greenhouse that would serve perfectly for them. I could even string lines up to the cross bar for them to climb.

We LOVED our sw. potatoes last year they were so tasty and so easy.

CapeCoddess 4/18/2014, 4:51 pm

I don't know anything about planting sweet potatoes but I thought this post was worth bumping. I'm going to start my now as I just picked up a bag of organic potatoes at the store. I love the idea that you can keep using the same mother potato to grow more and more vines.
CC

ander217 wrote:I don't know if this is the correct way or not, but the way we do ours is to place the end of a large, long sweet potato in a wide-rimmed pint jar and keep the water level up to the rim of the jar. I don't bother with the toothpicks. It will begin sprouting above the water line, mainly at the top end, and the part under water will grow roots.

We wait until the slips/sprouts/vines grow four or five inches long on the mother root, then snap them off and put them in water until they grow roots. (It doesn't take long, but they will keep growing longer as long as you don't let them go dry.) Once they've grown roots you can either transplant them to pots, or if the weather's warm enough, put them directly in the garden. The mother root will keep producing shoots for months. (We got 24 slips from one potato, stretched over about four months.) I've never tried putting unrooted slips right into the ground, so I can't say if it works or not, but they root pretty quickly in water, so as long as you keep the soil well watered it may work fine.

We had to keep replacing our plants in the garden due to vole damage until we finally had nothing left but the mother root which was still putting out a few shoots even though the root end had nearly rotted away in the water. We took it to the garden and buried it, and it is now producing vines, too. It had been in water since December. That's way too early to start slips, but it's the only potato we had left from an heirloom variety and we wanted to make certain we got plenty of slips from it. That's why we had to keep pulling off the slips and rooting them, then transplanting those to pots while the mother put out more slips.

I had one slip which grew very long before I snapped it from the mother root. I cut it in two, pulled a few leaves away from the cut end, and popped both slips into water, where they both rooted. So, it's not difficult at all to get sweet potato slips to root.

After a rough spring with unexpected drops in temperature and major vole damage, our sweet potato vines are finally starting to take off in the garden. At harvest we'll see if all the harsh treatment weakened them or made them stronger.

audrey.jeanne.roberts 4/18/2014, 5:35 pm

I missed the step of rooting the slips in water. I have just a couple coming up from my tossing the slips into the bed. I had to do this as I was leaving town to go to my parent's house for a few weeks as they would have died in the house anyway.

I should be able to do this really easily now. Thanks for posting that.
Audrey

CapeCoddess 4/18/2014, 7:13 pm

Okay, this might seem kind of silly, but do we put the fat end with the nubbin in the water or the pointy end?
sweet potato question - Page 5 Img_2048

CC

**sanderson** 6/26/2015, 2:51 am

First time growing sweet potatoes. I planted 5 slips each in 2 storage tubs. The mix has shrunk down now. Can I remove the straw and top dress with a couple inches of compost? Allowing the compost to touch the stalks? Or will they rot?

CC, This is a late reply but I cut my 2 sweet potatoes in half and put the cut ends down in 4 glasses of water with toothpicks. All 4 parts created slips.

johnp 9/7/2015, 5:31 pm

I have just been reading this thread because I planted sweet potatoes around the 10 th of June in a greenhouse. I had 50% shade cloth over it to keep them from getting terribly hot, but still wanted to get the heat index or whatever they call it as high as I could. I am noticing the soil being raised around each plant. I don't have any idea when they will be ready. Any suggestions?

littlejo 9/8/2015, 8:15 am

Johnp
I've heard that they usually take 100 days, but, down here in the South, I leave them either til I need some or til frost, which kills the vines. Really depends on the rain, heat they've recieved etc.

You can move away the dirt and see if you have potatos. They usually form near the top of soil, depending on variety.

Jo

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sweet potato question