We’ve been growing Bonita for several years and grew Murasaki for the first time this past year. Bonita is a great baker, excellent in hashes, and closer in taste and texture to a regular potato than any other sweet potato we’ve tried. Very productive and a really good keeper as well. Murasaki is sweeter and the taste shares some similarities with orange sweet potatoes. They produced well but haven’t been great keepers so far.
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They’re worth trying. I’ve grown Bonita, too. Very productive here in Kentucky, and one of the earlier whites. They have dry flesh, good sweetness, kind of a pleasant floral note to the flavor—especially when baked. They make good sweet potato fries. Would probably be great in a sweet tater pie, too! (Why do I want to put everything in a pie? 
) For a baking sweet potato, I personally prefer the moister-fleshed orange ones, like Georgia Jet.
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Georgia Jets are a favorite here as well. The best recent sweet potato discovery we’ve made is Becca’s Purple. Purple sweet potato but still relatively sweet and without the bitter taste we’d experienced with the grocery store purples. Only a couple of places offer the slips but worth trying if you can track them down.
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I’ll have to try Becca’s Purple sometime. Thanks for the recommendation! I did try Molokai Purple once, but didn’t care for it; it didn’t really have much flavor to speak of. Maybe it tastes better in Hawaii?
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I’ve grown white sweet potatoes a few times over the years. The last I recall was White Delite. I generally recommend white sweetpotatoes to people who want to make fries or chips. Extra dry varieties work best for this. Sandhill carries a huge selection, caveat that they have many missing this year due to loss in the Derecho. It is amazing how much damage strong winds can do. https://www.sandhillpreservation.com/sweet-potato
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Sweet potato people, I need your help! What sort of pathogen causes this storage disease? Dry, dark sunken patches, often with distinctive, darker borders, sometimes concentric rings:
The lesions sometimes converge:
These are “Pumpkin Yam.” I lost some of them—apparently to desiccation through a loss of skin integrity caused by these lesions—, though most are still very edible; however, when baked, there is a hard, dry spot in the flesh immediately under each lesion, which is somewhat bitter to the taste. “Georgia Jet” was more severely affected; the few I had were destroyed in storage. Bummer.
This is starting to become a recurrent problem here, despite the fact that I’ve been rotating my sweet potato crop. I tried treating with a 3% hydrogen peroxide bath before storage this past season, but this doesn’t seem to have helped a good deal, if at all. Perhaps it is slip-borne (as scurf often is) or maybe it’s just something that is endemic in my soil? Fusarium? Black rot? Any ideas? Possible solutions?
On a more positive note, Pumpkin Yam’s flavor and texture has improved tremendously in storage. Early on, I thought it probably only fit for roasting, fries, and the like, as it was drier and not quite as sweet as Georgia Jet. But the last ones we baked were superb—moist and syrupy sweet—every bit the equal (perhaps even the superior) of Georgia Jet. I also like the shorter habit of its vines. And it puts up with whatever issue I’m having here better than GJ (though it’s certainly far from immune), and seems about as early.
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Anyone raising sweet potatoes this year?
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I had a sweet potato from the grocery store that was starting to sprout, so I cut it into pieces and planted like potatoes. Only one came up. It is a six- inch clump now. I didn’t know about slips. Is there hope my clump will amount to anything by mid-September when we get our first frost? Do they need to reach a certain size before they are edible? Can we just dig them and eat them right away?
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Yes the cuttings root quickly but your pushing it. When in doubt grow them in pots. Most sweet potatoes take 90 -120 days. I think you can cheat and if nothing else people eat the entire plant.
If you grow morning glory you grow sweet potato
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Thanks.
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Sweet potatoes produce “slips” from buds near the top of the sweet potato. The root end normally does not produce slips though sometimes roots will emerge. Sweet potatoes can be placed in water at 120F for 30 minutes to induce growth from buds all along the length including down to the root end. I tried this years ago and did not regulate the temperature well enough. I got a lot of sprouts, but also damaged several of the sweet potatoes.
As stated above, sweet potatoes normally take 90 to 120 days to mature. Georgia Jet is one of the few that matures in 90 days and sometimes a bit less. It has several flaws, but if you are in a marginal growing area, might be worth chasing down.
It is possible to speed up growth significantly by using black plastic to warm the soil. I recommend using black plastic given your climate. A black garbage bag can do the trick if you are willing to pin it down on the ground where the plant can grow over it. Note, this trick is ONLY for people in cold climates with cool soil. In a hot climate, it is a waste of time as summer temperatures heat the soil up.
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I put out 70 or so slips. My sweet potatoes stored so poorly this time that I couldn’t start my own, so we bought slips of Georgia Jet and Covington. Also put out a few slips of Korean Gold and Myanmar Purple. I’ve had problems with scurf-infected commercial slips in the past, so I cut away the bottom 2 or 3 inches of each slip before planting. Would’ve preferred growing them out and taking cuttings that entirely excluded the original root zones, but by the time I received the slips there wasn’t time. (This step wasn’t necessary with Korean Gold and Myanmar, as they were grown-out tissue cultures.) Things are off to a slow start, because it’s been very hot and dry this year.
If I end up with any sweet taters—and I’m not counting my chickens, because my luck with them has taken a downturn these past few years—I think I’m going to have to pay much closer attention to the curing process. I believe some of my storage rot issues may be a result of poor curing—minor wounds inflicted during digging not hardening off and becoming an entryway for pathogens in storage. Often, because of late replantings and other issues, I’ll end up with a late harvest and not enough heat to properly cure them. Low humidity during curing might also be an issue. From what I’ve read, ideal curing conditions seem to be around 85F and 90% humidity. Apparently just leaving them in the wagon in the shed for a couple of weeks is not doing the trick.
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So if you just have a few sweet potatoes, can you just nuke and eat them or is curing required for them to taste good and have good texture?
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Do the vines die down like a potato plant does, or do you just decide to dig it up like with a beet or carrot? Why do they grow better in a pot?
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I don’t know of anyone who has grown one, so I suspect it isn’t a very reliable crop up here by St. Paul. But the sweet potato on the counter was woody inside and had tiny leaves sprouting, so I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to plant it. I’ve no idea what variety it is. I had never heard of eating the leaves.
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Sweet potato vines are perennial in areas with no winter. This makes them very popular in tropical countries. When grown as perennials, tubers are harvested leaving the plant to grow and produce more tubers. Don’t expect the vines to die, however, they can be killed by even a light frost. Getting frosted is a severe negative for flavor. I’ve salvaged some in years past by cutting off the vines early in the morning after a frost before the leaves had a chance to thaw. Sweet potatoes suberize over about 3 weeks at temperatures around 85 degrees as stated above. Some varieties do not properly mature due to infection with mycoplasma and other microorganisms. If eaten immediately after harvest, they have a latex like flavor that is repulsive to most. Matured properly, they get sweeter and develop a normal flavor profile. As I stated earlier, the best way to grow sweet potatoes in northern states is on black plastic and with very short maturing varieties. Sweet potatoes don’t really start growing until temps are 80 degrees and go into high gear at 110F. They prefer regular watering but once established can withstand significant periods of drought. They don’t grow much in a drought.
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I guess there is a reason I’ve never known anyone to grow them. They sound complicated to harvest and store. Easiest to just buy them at the store.
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I am thinking about adding sweet potatoes to my garden this year, but wanted to focus more on the greens than the tubers. If you know the variety you grew and can comment on the quality of the greens, I’d appreciate your input! Otherwise, I think I’ll try to root something from market greens or order some Murasaki slips…
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Anyone have sweet potatoes growing this year?
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I have 100 plants of Evangeline that were planted June 1. It is a 110 day variety so I will start looking soon as I don’t like huge sweet potatoes. Some vines are blooming but I don’t see any pushing up out of the ground. Today is the day for their weekly watering since no rain this week.
I had to come back with additional Calcium Nitrate 2 weeks ago as the leaves were showing N deficiency on my sandy soil. Had the wettest June and July ever so not surprised needing an extra shot of N. 2 pounds per 100 feet of row.
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