It looks the same as caragold and that’s why i got it to try out this year.
Deep Purple outside, very orangey inside, EXTREMELY sweet
When i went over there, that was one of the only things my daughter wanted to eat for the entire 2 weeks so I’m looking to find some more for her here in the US. Also i think the okinawa ones from the Asian grocery stores may be a different variety as well or I’m doing something wrong. Or i might have gotten a different variety last year.
So my okinawa purple journey: got some slips from Etsy earlier last year, grew it, grew a very few tubers but it was just bland so i didn’t try to save it.
Got a full, non slip but actual sweet potato from someone else and it took MONTHS but it sprouted finally. Threw the slips in a grow bag as well with old soil. May be a little a late doing so but they’re growing now. Will try to harvest them around the end of September but will try to let the grow bag and the entire thing dry out starting in about 2 weeks. Online says humidity and high temps are needed but I’m thinking like, wouldn’t a kind of moist but almost dry growing conditions and soil do the same thing? So this year, I’ll collect if any, try to self cure half and will just throw the other half under a light layer of soil that will be sitting on a black tarp or something on the driveway. Will move it to the garage with a heating pad underneath if it starts getting too cold. Going to do the same for the other sweet potatoes as well.
Photo is of last year’s harvest in Colorado Springs.
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Harvested with friends on October 10/11. My attempt afterwards to cure wasn’t great. Only half of them survived but they all tasted bland or normal like the grocery store one. I’m looking for the extra sweet ones…
Even with the severe hail we got in Colorado and everyone telling me i couldn’t do it, i did it now a bunch of people this year are trying sweet potato over there as well.
There’s a much longer growing season in Washington so I’ll be trying for the next few years here
That Korean variety sounds interesting. I hope you find it! I love those kind of striking color combinations. The USDA has a landrace variety from Guatemala in their germplasm system that’s the opposite color combo. It’s listed as having orange skin and purple flesh. If that’s true I’d really like to get my hands on that one as well. Unfortunately when I requested it last year I was denied.
Keep trying and please let me know if you ever get it! I love the candy type foods we stopped really eating candy a few years ago but i still crave sugar. I don’t feel so nasty eating the high sugar foods like i do when i ate candy
I finally got Okinawan to produce a few decent sized roots. Overall yield was still pretty bad at just over a pound per plant but good enough I can do a short row every year.
Purple Peru was the best yielder by number of average sized roots. Becca’s Purple had a bit more yield by weight but it has a higher water content so it’s not a fair comparison.
And the Vietnamese variety was the best yielding orange variety. Voles just hit the orange varieties so hard. I think they don’t bother Vietnamese as much because it’s less sweet. All of the large Bradshaw roots get devoured. I’ll probably keep growing a few as a sacrificial crop though.
I’m growing sweet potatoes for the first time this year. I’m growing
Camote Morado, Camote Rosita, and Japanese. All are fron Sandhill Preservation. the leaf/vine growth on Camote Morado seems to be the most significant of the 3 varieties so far. they also have tons of flowers.
Probably something like Beauregard or Georgia jet. Have been saving sprouts for a while. In our garden sweet potatoes are about the only thing that will always do well no matter the year.
I planted some of those decorative purple-leafed sweet potato vines this year along the front of my retaining wall. I was curious what type of potatoes they would make and I mostly found some light colored long thin potatoes (on the left below), but under one vine I found a giant twisted 2 lb 2 oz monster.
I believe you can eat them, since they are just basically a regular old sweet potato that has been selected for foliage color. Has anyone eaten them and were they tasty? I wouldn’t bother with the small ones, but the big one has me tempted.
If you zoom in on the smaller one, you can see where I cut the skin open with my thumbnail to show the light orange flesh, so it looks like a regular orange one inside.
I would definitely eat them. I’ll be curious to hear your report. I bet the leaves are pretty nutritious too. I would assume high in anthocyanins if they are purple. Do you remember where you got them?
I’m pretty sure they came from Burpees. I actually got them from my mother, who is 85 and in a senior living place where she has a small garden box. She orders stuff and always gives me the extras to grow - whether I really want to or not, lol.
Anyway, this was sort of fun to grow. Surprisingly the deer left them alone until more recently when they basically ate every leaf off and every new leaf that tried to grow, which is why I pulled them a bit on the early side. I think this is the listing and they do promote them as edible, so hopefully they’ll be reasonably good. A nice thing about them is they seem to grow more bush/compact than some other sweets I’ve grown that can get pretty rampant. Basically similar to Vardaman that I’ve grown in the past.
Did not get around to planting sweet potatoes in ground this year, so about mid June I just stuck a whole sweet potato from last year in a big planter to see what would happen. It was either Beauregard or Vardaman. I got them mixed up. Lots of sprouts and leaves grew from it and then deer ate the leaves to a nubbin even though the pot was on the driveway. Deer here seem to love sweet potato leaves above all else. I belatedly threw some netting over the pot and more leaves grew. Then the drought came and I did not water nearly enough for how fast a pot dries out compared to in-ground.
Sweet potatoes have a great desire to live, but I think if you want big sweet potatoes you need regular deep watering and warmth.
Below is a picture of my sad little harvest this year. I think in-ground works better for me if I can keep the deer off of the leaves. I also have found it is not necessary to root the slips you pinch off of the sweet potato prior to planting. I just lay a sweet potato flat in a tinfoil lasagna pan of soil about half buried and keep moist. When the potato has lots of sprouts I pinch them off and stick them directly in the soil where they are to be planted and water them in. They never fail to root and grow. Saves that step of sticking the slips in water or small pots of soil to root. Sweet potatoes seem to just love life and living!
Sandra
now a bunch of people this year are trying sweet potato over there as well.
