Sweet Potatoes 2019

[rdback]

Might be worth a try. I sure can't put them in the ground lol.

[heavyhitterokra]

You can make your own soil relatively quickly, by mixing grass clippings, swiping curbside raked leaf bags before the garbage man gets them, and composting your old okra stalks. Right now is the perfect time of year to go on leaf scavenger hunts in town. It's kind of fun looking for them. I look for old leaf bags set at curb sides, the way some people look for yard sales. Except I can actually use the things I find, unlike half the things that folks bring home from garage sales.

You can use old half barrels with a drain hole or use old burn barrels with a drain hole to make your compost in. That's what I use. That keeps the nearby trees from robbing all the nutrients by tree root encroachment (which is a big problem here). I enevitably encounter entanglements of finely entwined robber roots in the bottom of my unprotected compost piles. The containers really help a lot.

I buy my used barrels at the feed store. They have food grade steel, 55-gallon drums, and plastic drums, and I also use old, empty, plastic, cattle mineral lick containers. I buy those at the feed store too. They cost $4.00 and since they hold 250 pounds of mineral lick, they are about 27 gallon containers. I also use one of those to bring my Moringa tree inside for winter.

I built a carrier platform for it from old, sawmill oak pallet lumber afixed to a 4 wheel furniture dolly that I bought at Atwoods. Sometimes you can find those at second hand stores too. The lumber yard gives away free pallets. It just gives me something to do in winter to try and invent new ways to use them.

Then, you can use the very same half barrels or plastic mineral lick containers to grow your sweet potatoes in. The biggest problem I saw in the video, was that his drain holes were cut large enough for a vole to enter from underneath. I pop my drain holes with a 1/2" inch drill bit or else hack holes with the pointed end of my pick.

[rdback]

...this "sweet potato in a container" thing is getting more interesting. I'm almost convinced lol.

[heavyhitterokra]

The main draw back I've seen to container gardening is having to really watch your water intake. Too much water, after some of the 6" inch gully washers we receive each summer can drown your plants before the tubs have time to drain. Then, in hot, dry, conditions, I really have to pay attention to watering my container plants more than my plants in the ground, but if containers keep voles at bay, it would be worth all the extra effort for sure.

[john]

Ron Those are some super impressive sweet potatoes. You will have to put bake them overnight! LOL

[heavyhitterokra]

I chop those big sweet potatoes into 4" inch sections and microwave each section for about 8 minutes on high. I cook them 4 minutes then flip them.

My wife bakes them in the oven after I've cut them into 2" inch slabs. I use a hack saw to cut them in two sections. We don't cook them whole. You can cut a slice off and then turn the unused portion, cut side down on a plastic cutting board and it will keep that way until you need another slice off of it later in the week.

[john]

When my kids were little I used to read them a story titled "Jamie O'Rourke and the Giant Potato" . (By Tommy DePaola) Your sweet potato reminds me of that story.

[heavyhitterokra]

I'll have to look that one up. I've not heard that story before.

[macmex]

Well, it's not quite Christmas time yet, but I baked a White Eclipse sweet potato at work for my morning break. I like this variety! I just wish I had taken more photos of it. (Seems one can never have enough pictures.) This was only the second year, growing it, for me. So far, I'd rank it alongside Grand Asia and Molokai, for its preferences for conditions and general production. The flavor, after curing this long (from the first week of October) is fairly sweet. It might be just a tad sweeter than Grand Asia. The texture is firm. It is slightly firmer than Grand Asia and less mealy. I love all the variations in sweet potato flavor, sweetness and texture; but I have to categorize myself as one who leans toward the drier types.





First impression when digging this one, is that the roots are fairly long and somewhat crooked. They are brittle, so extra care needs to be taken when digging. Freshly dug, right from the get go, White Eclipse roots are BRIGHT white in color. One might even describe them as "bone white."The roots are impressive for size and volume of harvest. The plants, like Grand Asia and Moloki, are noticeably large, large leafed and vigorous.

Anyway, I want to post about it here. This variety has almost no documentation on the internet, and it would be helpful for would-be growers if they could get the scoop on it. I haven't grown it enough, to speak authoritatively on it, but my impression is that this is one which will do "okay" in a "mildish summer" (for Oklahoma) but turns into a "sweet potato Godzilla" when the real heat comes on. That's how it is with Grand Asia and Molokai. White Eclipse seems to be cut from the same fabric, so to speak.