I’m up to 20 sweet potato varieties this year. Some tried and true varieties I’ve grown for several years and a mix of new varieties to test. Most of them I originally got from Sandhill Preservation. And then a couple of the new ones are from Steele Plant Company.
I did try to get a few varieties from the USDA GRIN but sadly they didn’t accept my request. I don’t know how some of you are so successful at getting plants from them.
These are the varieties that made the cut this year:
Continental Red
Nam Hai
Vietnamese
Becca’s Purple
Bradshaw
Purple Peru
Ivis White Cream
Dingess Purple
Kalona Sunrise
Oklahoma Purple
Delaware Purple
Orleans
Purple Passion
Schaum’s Purple
Hatterias
Gold Nugget
Orange Oakleaf
Wilma’s
Georgia Yam
Okinawa Purple
What varieties are you growing this year?
Anyone from the southern hemisphere have harvest photos for 2024?
I juat have Murasaki sweet potatoes. When I was younger my mother grew these (or possibly Japanese White) from a community garden, and they were delicious. I’ll probably never grow an orange variety, never liked casseroles or sweet potato fries from a store.
Bradshaw is superb. Look up some good recipes for a slightly dry flesh variety if cooking it.
Okinawa purple is unlikely to make anything in your climate. I struggle to get it to develop any size here in North Alabama and Southern Tennessee. It is a very long season variety typically taking 200 days or more. In an optimum year, I get 200 days.
“I grow Beauregard” is kinda like saying “I grow Red Delicious”. I grew about 100 or maybe 150 varieties of sweet potato over the years. Mahon/Bradshaw is the only one that stuck over the long term. I put in about 50 plants a couple of months ago and gave my stooling tray to a neighbor who got 40 or 50 more.
This is my third year trying Okinawan. You’re right it’s just not suited to our climate but my stubbornness makes me keep trying different things. This is the last year… probably.
I agree Beauregard isn’t ideal compared to other varieties. Doesn’t keep its quality in storage and has a tendency to produce some football sized roots.
The one positive for Beauregard is it’s leaves. Everyone will tell you that you can eat sweet potato leaves, but what they don’t tell you is that some varieties taste better than others. Beauregard has really tasty leaves. But for me that alone wasn’t worth keeping it.
Good to hear about Bradshaw. I only grew one plant last year and kept most of those roots for my seed stock. Haven’t gotten a proper tasting of it yet.
Vietnamese has been my go to orange variety so far, but it has pretty low sweetness and not a lot of character in flavor. Super rugged and productive though. Its a good variety for blending into curries, gravy or other dishes. It’s super smooth with no stringiness and has a mild flavor.
Purple Peru is my favorite purple variety. It’s right in the middle, not too dry and not too watery. When you dry bake it at 375 for about an hour it gets like a slightly moist, slightly chewy texture. Like eating a chewy brownie. So good.
I can’t be picky in Italy. It’s the only choice and it’s even hard to find those slips.
I create my own slips by buying sweet potatoes at the AF base commissary but guess what type they are? Beauregard. I’ve never seen sweet potatoes for sale at any Italian grocery store
It seems more common for some of the purple varieties to flower up north here. And they’re pushing out a lot of flowers right now. I don’t recall ever seeing any of the orange varieties flower.
I have Evangeline blooming now. Plenty of rain for the last month and irrigated up until then. Best looking patch of sweet potatoes in the last four years for me.
Screenshots of my plants from a video i made a few days ago. Currently growing them in grow bags, just moved them 2 days ago to the front driveway so i could get that extra heat from the bottom to help them get swell up.
The okinawa are all in one 25 gallon grow bag. The others are all together. Currently in Washington state with them, started them in Colorado on May 20th or so.
It is a dry orange flesh sweet potato that has the best overall rich sweet potato flavor I’ve tasted. Production is good to very good with high consistency. If you dig deep into breeding lines in the 2 ongoing state level sweet potato breeding programs, you will find Mahon is one of the ancestors for many of the very good sweet potatoes released over the last 30 years.
A few others are worth mentioning such as Nugget and Okinawan Purple. Nuggett is susceptible to several soil borne diseases and Okinawan Purple takes 8 months to mature (my climate has 6.5 to 7 months where sweet potatoes grow well). I really like Okinawan Purple but growing it is a pain. It has flavor on par with Mahon and is fantastic in a casserole. Nancy Hall is considered very good by many people, but it just doesn’t have that flavor I enjoy. Puerto Rico is another red delicious type sweet potato.
It took 2 uhauls to get everyone over here. I sold some but not a lot. Time is the only thing you can’t really buy and a lot of my stuff has taken a lot of time and effort just to get. I’m not willing to wait another season for some of my stuff
Now i just need to know what variety it is that they sell on the streets of South Korea in the fall and winter
I’ll be curious to see how your Okinawan’s do.