sweet potato tutorian

 

I had a very successful sweet potato year so I thought I'd share what we've been doing.

I have come to sweet potatoes partly because I grew up with tales of my great-grandmother selling sweet potato slips. This money went in with butter money, and come fall her husband took paper bad outlines of each child's foot in to town to buy their shoes for the year. And they had 16 kids who all lived to adulthood.

But I also love eating sweet potatoes. My mother especially liked "little white sweet potatoes" (back then they were orange or white), baked, and then you cut off one end, put some butter on that, and bit it off -- and continued down the potato to the other end. Eating sweet potatoes plain with only butter is still my favorite way to eat them.

Well, about three years ago I started some slips. And I sold some too. Honestly, my slips didn't look as good as the ones the produce stand had, and I pretty much decided that I would concentrate on eating rather than selling. This has been a path we've been down multiple times before -- eat first: sell or (more often just) share extra, surplus, abundance.

This year I bought sweet potatoes from the Asian Market to start my slips from: purple, orange, and white. I don't know what month I did it in last year but this year I swear I'm getting them started by early February. I have some plastic dish pans that I put some dirt in, get it good and soaking wet, and bury the potatoes about halfway. You won't keep that soil soaking, but fairly wet, clumping together wet; no drain holes needed. And unless its warm, a heat mat. These may sit there and stare at you for an inordinately long time. This year my yellows never did sprout (probably treated with a sprout inhibitor). The white *eventually* sprouted, but by the time they did, it was too late to root them and get them set out. So ALL my sweet potatoes this year were purple-skinned with purple flesh.

I will say that my favorite ever sweet potatoes that I ever had were purple-skinned with white flesh. If I remember correctly, some of the ones I had my first year were that. Because I'm just buying potatoes, I'm never sure what cultivar I have. I will likely try to preserve one or two potatoes I grew this year to get slips from next year. And I'll hope the white ones sprout that I will look for and buy next year will sprout this time.

When the potatoes sprout at least four inches tall, you can cut them and start them rooting. But you don't want to plant them out before danger of frost has past because they are VERY frost sensitive. So timing is a thing and I haven't completely worked that out. They are rooted simply by putting in water -- I use half-pint canning jars and put 10-15 slips in each -- they need to be crowded enough to keep them upright.

Sweet potatoes want rich, loose soil. To plant, after the bed it dug a little and smoothed, I put them maybe 6" to a foot apart. I dig a hole, water that hole, put the slip in, water again, fill the hole and tamp down so it's a little lower than the surrounding bed and I will water that again. This gives them the very best chance for a good start. If it's dry for the next week, they will get watered again. The big weeds will get pulled until the potatoes take off and smother them out. Not religiously, just enough to give the potatoes the advantage. The only weed I'll have to come back and look for later is those gosh darned morning glories that I hate! They will try to take over.

And then they just grow and you walk by and marvel!

I have been told to not let it frost on the vines. Certainly, harvest them before the ground gets cold. I waited too long to harvest last year and didn't get much -- at least I think that's what it was. This year they got lightly frosted but the vines were still green. The last bed I harvested had more mouse-bitten potatoes than the first.

I dug them by plunging my hands into the loose dirt, after I'd pulled the vines off. (We fed the vines to the rabbits.) I have used a potato fork in the past, but hands were more effective at telling where the potatoes were and getting them out unharmed. They grow straight down so sometimes I'd uncover the top of one and loosen it a bit and it was like pulling a tooth out of the ground!

After they are harvested, they need to be cured. You can (and I did) eat them right away, but curing makes them keep better and makes them sweeter. They want to be at 80-85 degrees and 85-90% humidity for 7-10 days. I don't have any ideal way to accomplish this. I set up boxes (one was a clear blanket box, and one was an old cooler that I separated the lid from. In one case I used a wire cooling rack and in the other a wire shelf from a freezer that recently went kaput. these did not fit inside the boxes so the lids were placed on the ground, a heating pad put there, the wire rack over that (on paving bricks to elevate it), then the potatoes ricked on top of that. I kept a thermometer in there, and a cup of water, and every day I "spilled" water on the potatoes to up the humidity. I don't thing I ever got it to 90%. I also put two seed heat mats (no thermostat) on the sides of the blanket box as it had more trouble keeping the temp up as it wasn't insulated (aha!). The blanket box was beside the woodstove though, and the cats loved to sleep in it.

Then, in 7-10 days, I got them out and sorted through them -- eat nows are any with imperfections, rabbits are too small or turned soft ones, and stores are perfect ones. They are stored like our Irish potatoes -- in newspaper lined milk crates kept in the basement.

And just maybe you will have as much fun with sweet potatoes as I have had!