Great time for planting sweet potatoes

[macmex]

I didn't get any pictures. But yesterday I spent most of the day planting sweet potato slips. The heat and humidity were draining. (I looked it up. They say  it 101 F.!) I found I had to come into the house, sit and drink, frequently. By night fall I looked and felt like I'd been rolling in the mud all day. The mosquitoes may have taken enough blood to disqualify me from donating this summer... But it was a great day! I always feel so good when I have them in! 

Wait! I still have at least forty feet more to plant! But at least I now have some of all the varieties I grow, out in the field. Sales for sweet potato slips have been pretty good this year, and I struggle to keep enough for myself. But this way, I shouldn't risk losing any variety.

Sweet potatoes are among the most labor intensive crops I plant...at planting time. They are a pretty laborious crop to harvest. Though I almost don't notice that, when I'm pulling those beautiful roots out of the ground, come fall. But, once planted, until harvest, they are also one of the easiest crops, requiring the least attention.

Last year we had one of the best crops ever. I still haven't stopped enjoying baked sweet potatoes, at work, for my morning break. Every time I think, "Well, that's about the end of them," I find a couple more. I don't think I'll ever tire of sweet potatoes!

[heavyhitterokra]

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's a good time to find our favorite sweet potatoes on sale for starting next year's slips in the kitchen window. I usually find a likely candidate in a grocery store somewhere between now and Christmas. I take it home and soak it in warm water overnight, then scrub all the chemicals off of it, in case it's been treated with any sprout inhibitors.

After that, I set it aside in my kitchen somewhere out of the way and watch for it to sprout. Once I see potato buds start forming (sometimes as late as February) I put my potato in an old cake pan or Tupperware dish or whatever is handy and I cover it with damp sand. In a few weeks, I'll have quite a few sprouts breaking ground for next year's garden.

This week, I found sweet potatoes on sale for .33 cents per pound. A single, one pound potato is enough to start a whole tray full of slips. Not a bad Autumn investment for next year's Spring garden.

[glen]

We just had sweet potato's on sale in our local grocery store for 68 cents per lb. Normal price is 1.89 cents per lb. I made sure and bought some small spuds to plant also. I dug a trench and lined up the spuds in the trench and covered them over. I haven't tried growing sweet potato's for several years.
I should have read Georges suggestions for planting spuds. I just planted the potato's whole, no roots or sprouts. Maybe they will take root, maybe not. I think they will root though and give me plenty of slips even though I broke all of Georges rules. Yes, they are quite a bit of work to get the slips, then plant the slips. If I get some sweet potato's out of the deal I won't mind at all.

[macmex]

They'll grow. The problem, especially in your climate, is that weevils will often come with the roots and infest the new crop. If you get away with it this time, you might want to do the slip production thing in the future, and try  plant in different parts of the garden, for repeated plantings. 

[glen]

George, the plan is to cut the slips if they come like planned. I will take the slips and plant them in different spots in the yard. I planted 5 small spuds in a row in a trench so I could harvest the slips. I have done this before but it was a few years back. I have a small garden space now since fruit tres have consumed most of my space so there won't be nearly as many slips planted as I would like. Also, having a small garden space is problematic because the nematodes get real bad as well as other bugs. I have no where to plant now so I plant in the same general área and it is becoming problematic for me. If I am lucky I will have space for 10 or 15 slips and I will have to plant them kind of bunched up. Eventually I will have no garden space at all because an avocado tree and a Malaysian mountain Apple will shade the entire back yard. My fault for not buying a bigger homesite.

[glen]

Sweet potato's, or, chamote as it is called here in Panama is not common here. It is not grown here routinely, nor is it commonly even for sale here. When it is for sale it is normally real expensive. I have seen one variety in the markets. They call it morado. I planted some of those before and they are great producers of brown or copperish colored orange fleshed sweet potato's. One year a man I met managed to find me some white fleshed sweet potato slips. they had the prettiest blue skin on them. They were not very prolific but did produce 2 or 3 big spuds per slip. They are less sweet and more dry than the morado. I have never seen this white sweet potato for sale anywhere. I wish I had some more of those slips. Where I live is cattle country. There is a lot of land, terrible soil and lots of high heat and high humidity and not much available water either. People don't garden or farm much in my area. Everything is brought in. We do have cattle. Grass fed. They also produce feeder corn or corn they use to make corn meal. Thats it. Gardening is tough in my area. The climate is harsher than anywhere I have ever been except the desert. Thats worse. But, not much worse. Most deserts have nice cool nights. I don't even have that. I am not sure why people don't eat sweet potato much where I live. They dont eat goat here either which is strange to me, living in a Latino culture and they don't eat goat? They raise it. But, they only drink the milk. I have yet to find a source of goat meat, or a dependable source of sweet potato's.

[glen]

Ron, today I was in the supermercado today and I saw those marvelous morado sweet patoto's and zoomed right in on em. Its a Little crowded in the veggy dept. No one is even peeping at the sweet potatos. I can't figure it out. I immediately started filling my bag. They never have em. I got my second 10 lb bag for the month of December. The man that weighs em didn't even know the code for sweet potato's and had to ask the boss. Thats how few of these beauty's get sold. Whats wrong with these people? Latino's that don't like sweet potato's? They don't eat okra either. Maybe I am in the wrong place? Oh well. See ya!!! I got's mines.

[heavyhitterokra]

Glen,

You just flung a craving on me for a baked sweet potato. My 5-gallon bucket is already about half empty. i might have to buy some this year after all.

[theozarkan]

I smell spam.

[George's Administrator Hat]

Thanks for calling it to my attention. I deleted that post and banned the IP address from our forum.

[buzoval]

Thank you for this post. I first tried these potatoes in Korea. A cafe was selling smoothies and I tried it and really liked it. I decided to try the same thing at home. Thanks for the answers.

[heavyhitterokra]

Sweet potato smoothies sound pretty good. It's amazing how versatile sweet potatoes are. They lend themselves well to both sweet and savory dishes. My wife fries them, makes chips with them, bakes them, makes pies with them, grates them in salads, adds them to chili, adds them to pancake batter, slices them up as treats for our dogs and for her pet deer, and now, I'm fairly sure smoothies will be added to our list. She makes smoothies out of just about anything.

Speaking of 'just about anything' I just happened onto a Good Housekeeping sweet potato challenge page that lists 40 sweet potato recipes.
www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/g657/sweet-potato-recipes/?slide=1

Followed by 36 butternut squash recipes.
www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/g767/butternut-squash-recipes/?slide=1