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Post by woodeye on Oct 11, 2023 5:58:11 GMT -6
My sweet potato plants never grew very large this year. I never used fertilizer at all, but put some potash on them once. This picture is from the 2 hills I dug yesterday, they are definitely not very big. I suppose a crop of small sweet potatoes is better than no crop at all, there are 48 hills left to dig. I will be very happy regardless, I just want a crop big enough to have a few to eat and then some to save for slips for next year. These are not from the slips that you sent me macmex. I'll dig some of them next, maybe this weekend.
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Post by macmex on Oct 11, 2023 6:25:00 GMT -6
I'm behind on digging mine. So far, most varieties only produced enough to save for seed for the coming year. Old Yellow, on the other hand, appears more promising. I just started digging that one and got some nice sized roots.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 11, 2023 19:23:41 GMT -6
Those don’t look too bad to me, Woodeye. They remind me of my mom’s Ginseng Orange sweet potatoes which just don’t get as big as the Beauregards that I liked to grow. If you have forty eight more hills like that, I’d say you’ll have plenty for eating and for slip production. I’ll look forward to more reports in the future.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Oct 14, 2023 18:45:38 GMT -6
woodeye With all those hills left, I bet you have some big guys in there. Those look great, good eating size. It’s fine to dig up a prize whopper, but they are a pain to manage unless you’re ready to eat a whole bunch sweet potatoes for a few days. I usually end up processing the big ones into the freezer for potato pie later on and eating the smaller ones.
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Post by woodeye on Oct 14, 2023 21:45:15 GMT -6
I managed to get about half of the row dug and moved into the house today. There are a few that are decent size, but nothing to brag about yet. I will have reached my goal of having some to eat and some for slips for next year, so I can't complain a whole lot. It has been a lot of fun to watch them grow without worrying about deer eating the vines, I'm very thankful for that. I will take some pictures once I get them all dug and moved into the house, hopefully tomorrow sometime...
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Post by woodeye on Oct 16, 2023 11:03:13 GMT -6
Got the second half of the sweet potatoes harvested yesterday and they are safely in the house now.
Learned a couple of things this year that I'll do differently next year. Half of the total number of slips had been well rooted in potting mix. The remaining slips had not been rooted well, they were just stuck in the potting mix cups a couple of days before I set them all out.
The slips that were well rooted in the potting mix cups produced an abundant number of very long skinny unusable roots. They also produced usable roots, but not as many as the slips that were not rooted well. In addition, the well rooted slips produced lots more vine that the slips that were not well rooted, even though they were the same varieties. I'm sorry I do not know the exact varieties except for the Ginseng Orange and Barberman, during slip production I was dealing with a family crisis and garden information totally got away from me.
The slips that were not well rooted did not vine out nearly as much and did not produce very many skinny unusable roots. But they produced more usable roots than the well rooted slips did.
I need to use the subsoiler in the sweet potato row before I plant the slips next year, that is the second thing I learned this year.
Next year's plan is to pinch off slips and put them in potting mix cups 2 days before I plant, plus use the subsoiler in the row. Other than that, I'll just apply potash a few times during the year and water them as I did this year. The plants looked good throughout the growing season, even the grasshoppers didn't bother them much.
As a bonus, the nutsedge roots that was in the row did not grow through the sweet potato roots. Nutsedge will grow through Irish potato tubers however and became a major problem when I was growing those.
None of the sweet potatoes split from over-watering. All in all I'm okay with the crop I got this year, and hopefully the things I learned this year will help me have a better crop next year.
I really like how the Ginseng Orange produce their roots right under the plant, there was no hunting involved in digging those. Only 2 plants of that variety this year, but will be many more next year for sure!
Entire crop this year, 3-1/2 five gallon bucket fulls. Ginseng Orange on left, Barberman on right. Slips from macmex . Thank You George!
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Oct 16, 2023 19:55:46 GMT -6
Some good eatin’ right there! You might have some Oklahoma reds in the mix. THey tend to outproduce everything else I grow.
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Post by macmex on Oct 17, 2023 6:00:20 GMT -6
Looking good Woodeye!
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Post by woodeye on Oct 17, 2023 8:01:15 GMT -6
Thank you all, I'll keep trying to improve the methods of planting and growing them here. Lots of small ones this year, I hope to improve things enough that I have more medium sized sweet potatoes next year. I'm going to change the location for sweet potatoes in the Iron Curtain next year, not just for crop rotation reasons, but also for getting away from the south end that is shaded by that huge blackjack oak tree. The tree didn't sap too much moisture from the area that the sweet potatoes were planted in this year, but it shaded the area for half the day. I don't want the sweet potatoes in the shade like that, so I'll fix that problem next year.
FrostyTurnip, I'm sure there are some Oklahoma Red in the pile, I'll try to figure out which ones they are. I believe they look very similar to the Red Wine Velvet. Trouble is, I don't even know for sure if there are any Red Wine Velvet sweet potatoes in the pile. Anyway, I'll do my best to figure it out.
macmex, If I can't figure out for sure if I have any Red Wine Velvet sweet potatoes in the pile, I plan to find a source for some slips next year. One of my biggest regrets this year is not keeping the varieties separated like I should have.
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Post by macmex on Oct 17, 2023 8:42:51 GMT -6
It's hard to always distinguish between Red Wine Velvet and Oklahoma Red. Here are some pointers:
1. Oklahoma Red will produce very long, very skinny roots when planted in very hard soil. These will run shallow. They tend to be so skinny that they are harder to use. In soft soil they produce normal shaped roots right under the plant (like Red Wine Velvet). If you found real long, shallow, skinny red roots, they were almost certainly Oklahoma Red. If they were normal, then... maybe not.
2. Red Wine Velvet often produces plants with fasciated stems. Not every Red Wine Velvet plant does this but in a given planting I always find some. Many of varieties never fasciate. Oklahoma Red is one of them.
Here are some photos I took this year of some extreme fasciation in Red Wine Velvet.
3. Red Wine Velvet freely flowers in my garden. Oklahoma Red rarely flowers in my garden. Some varieties flower more freely than others. Some varieties, like Beauregard (and maybe Oklahoma Red) never do.
4. When one eats an Oklahoma Red, baked, it is very good and sweet. So is Red Wine Velvet, but side by side, it's noticeable that Red Wine Velvet is a softer, moister, mushier root.
I hope to have some slips available next spring but I won't advertise at all. I am likely to lose varieties this year and probably won't replace them if I do. Red Wine Velvet is non negotiable. I have to grow it every year as that's the wife's favorite and we've had it for so long.
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Post by amyinowasso on Oct 17, 2023 10:47:31 GMT -6
We didn't grow sweets this year, but last (?) Year, I broke the slips off stored tubers and stuck them directly in the ground? We use a 5' wide fabric bed, so the soil is compost and previous year's potting soil. They weren't hardened off, weren't rooted and went in late. We got as good a harvest as in previous years. (No idea what variety.) I was completely blown away by the fact that they didn't wither without hardening off. We were careful to water well.
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Post by macmex on Oct 17, 2023 12:38:31 GMT -6
I've experimented and found that slips NEVER need to be hardened off. They resist UV light, straight out of the greenhouse. It's great!
Also, to observation about rooted or not agrees with what I've seen and understood. Even with no roots at all, "slips" do much better than potted plants. The sweet potato starts sold in box stores are almost always potted and have a ball of roots in the pot. When popped out of the pot and planted, they almost always produce a knotted mess of nearly unusable roots.
If I had to get my starts from a box store I'd strip off almost all the roots before planting.
Slips, Cuts & Rooted Plants
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Post by woodeye on Oct 17, 2023 16:30:10 GMT -6
Thanks for the info, macmex. I did notice one normal shape red sweet potato root while I was digging them that had raised "veins". I remember reading in the past about a sweet potato variety that produces roots like that, but off hand I can't remember which variety it is.
I did not have any vines with the fasciated stems like those in the picture you posted. There is lots of red ones that are long and skinny, not sure how easy they are going to be to use, if at all. I'll try to use them somehow.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 17, 2023 18:47:41 GMT -6
All this talk of Red Wine Velvet surely makes me want to grow it.
My mom made a Ginseng Orange sweet potato casserole today for my kids to enjoy at breakfast tomorrow. It’s in the oven now.
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