2023 Sweet Potatoes

[macmex]

What sweet potatoes do you plan on growing this year? Tell us if you're starting your own slips.

I think I finished bedding my slips about three days ago. It's simply wonderful to walk into the greenhouse now and see things starting to come to life. Here's a link to the Sweet Potato Thread on Starting Roots in 2023. 

The greenhouse only only a little room for other plants...





I'm supposed to be cutting down but at this point the only thing I've cut back on is the number of trays I start per variety and the fact that I'm not sending out a catalog. I'll just sell to inquirers, mainly past customers who contact me.

I should be cutting back on varieties but that's hard. I simply love growing from true seed and seeing what I get from these crosses. Surprisingly, it looks like half of what I trialed from seedlings, last year, ended up being worth a second trial. Here's  link the the Kaukura Cross, which ended up producing a very small vine and compact, smaller cluster of roots. I was impressed that this one, if it performs consistently, might be enjoyed by folk with less growing space or in containers. We'll see. Here's another link to discussion of some more crosses I'll be trialing.

 

[FrostyTurnip]

Oklahoma Red 
An orange and white variety from you.  I forgot what varieties.  I had planned on taking photos of the leaves and also the cut spuds later this year.  

I potted up the small white roots as you suggested.  They’re okay.   They seem much more delicate.  We’ll see.  I should have much more with this year’s harvest with good care.   

I’m shooting for triple the plantings versus last year.  We have discovered some types of cooking them that 2 of us enjoy, mainly spicy baked fries.  Yum!  Any excess can be shared with others who might need.  They seem to like my soil. 

[macmex]

Excellent! 
We should be able to identify the white and the orange variety. Might take a bit.

[amyinowasso]

Somewhere I wrote down my varieties, but I don't remember them off hand. A red one is sprouting. I think I had 2 orange ones so we would know them, but I think they all got cooked. I'll probably ask for a couple of different colored slips so I can tell them apart.

[woodeye]

I have 4 varieties that I am sure of and I'll try my hand at growing slips this year. Also have one variety that I am unsure of, but I'll try them anyway.

Kaukura
Korean Pink
Korean Purple
Oklahoma Red
Red Velvet <--- Not sure if that is actually what it is

[macmex]

Perhaps that's Red Wine Velvet?

Where did you get your slips from?

I believe June has a Korean Purple which she shared with Sandhill Preservation Center.

All sound good!

I was going through our surplus roots this morning and found a few more Korean Pink. Cooked this one up for my morning snack.

 

Korean Pink is dense, smooth and fairly sweet. Okinawa is sweeter as are a number of other varieties. It's still good.

[woodeye]

macmex

Yes that's right, it is Red Wine Velvet. I got the Oklahoma Red from FrostyTurnip, and the rest are from june.

[macmex]

Here's a picture of just part of my slip production, taken on 4/22/2023. I am experiencing the same issues as most years:

1) I vacillate between fearing that I won't be able to cover the demands of orders that come in and... that I am not going to sell enough to justify the work of production.\
2) I ALWAYS start my slips too early. Need to make yet another note, to start later (and set the date now).

Should note that long vines are not a real problem with slip production. Once can simply cut the vines in lengths, say about 8" long. The pieces without roots can be planted directly or set in water for 3 days to get the start of roots. It really doesn't make much difference.

Some varieties have a more leggy growth habit, when it comes to sprouting. Brinkley White, for example, will sprout super fast when bedded and shoot up really long vines while other varieties are barely waking up. Ginseng Orange, on the other hand appears to have been bred by someone thinking about slip production for mail order. It wakes up pretty easily, makes a slew of slips, which upon reaching 8" will pause growth for several weeks. It's as if the roots are saying, "Here you go. Come harvest the slips before I start more." Once the slips are harvested, Ginseng Orange will go ahead and repeat the process.

[FrostyTurnip]

Looks good to me, George.  Cannot have too many slips.  Ha   I do mine in the house and enjoy the slips growing as much as eating them when they’re harvested.

I let the Oklahoma Reds tell me when it’s time.  If they begin putting on slips in storage, I stick the spud in water and put them in the window for indirect sunlight.  They do well, even when the window freezes. Once it warms up, I remove the slips and put them in water, too.    Well, the other two varieties are far more sluggish than Oklahoma Reds.  Looking back, I should have put those spuds in soil  But they’re giving me enough slips to work with.  Next year, I’ll try to make room for soil. Actually, I just realized I still have plenty of time to put some of the orange variety in soil to make more.  The white variety is spent but its slips are rooting out well. 

This year I have more light on my light table and with it more shelf space. I started about 4 times more spuds than usual and AFter the slips began, I moved them to the light table. They didn’t like it so I crammed them back into the windows. Odd, really.  

I put the white spuds in a pot as you suggested and grew those like a house plant all winter.  Once they put out initial slips, the spuds were spent.  Hopefully, I can baby these through the year and get more spuds.  So even though they were in good soil, they are just weak. 

As a side note, I purchased a plug of the lime colored ornamental variety.  I took off leaves and placed those in water to propagate more.  Curiously, they only put out roots at the node.  The ones without a node tried, but couldn’t pull off rooting out.  

The different vitality among the varieties is curious, indeed.  I need to be diligent or I’ll end up with only Oklahoma Reds which are clear winners for me.  

[macmex]

Heat, and how much they need, is also a major difference between varieties. When a potted sweet potato becomes "spent" I usually suspect it petered out because it didn't have enough heat to make it happy. I gave Hank some slips, which a friend sent me last fall. I know I don't have the facilities to keep them alive through the winter, on account of their need for heat. He has better facilities yet the slips petered out on him before spring. Oklahoma Red is just a really good, reliable variety. It's reliable in many of its characteristics. I also find Becca's Purple to be super reliable. Ginseng Orange, Red Wine Velvet and Hopi are others which I find very reliable. Of course, depending on a person's facilities and climate, "dependable" may vary.

Old Yellow, last I knew, was still sulking without a single sprout. Yet, I suspect in a really hot environment, it would be quite good for slips. It is certainly a rock solid long keeper.

[FrostyTurnip]

Very good.  Thank you, sir.  Now, I note that the light table wasn’t heated though the ambient temps are more stable than the kitchen. Even I drag in a radiant heater to warm up the entire small space.  Those potted white sweet potatoes were on top of the frig (indirect from a very bright overhead light).  I bet they were benefiting from the warmth of the frig.

I bet if I put them on a heat mat next winter beneath the light shelf,  they’ll do fine.  

[chrysanthemum]

Macmex, those sweet potato slips are looking great. I can see why people grow ornamental varieties as the leaves and vines are so pretty.

For a variety of reasons I decided not to plant sweet potatoes this summer, but I’ve been missing them. There I was delighted when some volunteers popped up in one of my garden beds and in a spot in my backyard where I had dumped out my mother roots last year and let them grow.




This is the patch in the garden that the deer nibbled the other week, but they’ve grown back well.  If we get some rain soon, I plan to use the slips and plant them out in moist soil where in the two small beds where I don’t have anything else growing right now [due to my failure to germinate grey zucchini seeds successfully].  If figure if they’re going to volunteer for me, I had just better pay attention.

[macmex]

That'll make enough starts for you to have a decent crop!
Up this far north we never have volunteers survive. I've found roots as deep as 2 plus feet down (once while digging up a water line) yet the cold and wet rots all roots left outside.

[chrysanthemum]

I used those volunteer sweet potatoes as well as a clump from my back yard to plant four four x four raised beds with starts this morning ahead of some heavy rain expected later today and tomorrow.  I  spread a good layer of compost from one of our tumblers and did water them in because I felt I had to despite the forecast.  Two of the beds have zucchini in the center, so they only got four starts as opposed to nine in each of the empty beds.  

[woodeye]

macmex, 

The slips I got from you are now planted in the Iron Curtain. 

I had gotten some sweet potatoes from june, and from FrostyTurnip, so I put 6 of those in a bus tub full of potting mix. There are countless slips growing up from them, I planted 37 slips from those, plus the 13 slips that I got from you. All total, 50 slips planted today.

This is the first time I've ever grown my own slips, I'm totally amazed at how many slips that tub of 6 sweet potatoes produced. I imagine there's at least 50 more slips left in the tub, maybe more.