all my vines turned black in the frost.
i pulled the pots and got about a gallon and a half of good sized sweet potatoes! we will have them for solstice dinner. leaving them in the warm dry spot up top in the greenhouse for a while to cure.
i planned red, orange and purple. the red did best here.
Lay thine eyes upon my magnificent harvest!
Next year I won’t try planting anything with the sweet potatoes. They are going to get an area all to themselves. They won’t be in the greenhouse. (Originally I was going to put watermelon in the greenhouse where I had these, but I jumped the gun and put the taters in instead.)
At least I got a couple decent sized ones if I were to eat them.
Not going to lie, I was pretty disheartened with this result, but dangit, I will grow my own sweet potatoes! Enough to eat at least a few meals!
I reviewed what I said above and figured it was not a fair emotion/conclusion with the growing situation. I should try one more time and do it right. (Before deciding to only grow for greens!)
Adding to what seems to be some dissappointing harvests…
I harvested the first of my sweet potatoes. This variety is Bunch Puerto Rico. This was from 4 slips planted in a 15-20 gallon container that I had filled with recycled promix. I actually don’t remember if I fertilized these or not. There were lots of very long thin roots, some of them 18" long or so and less than 1" thick. I had tried this variety once in the past and been dissapointed in the production then as well. It will be interesting to see how the long thing ones cure and what they’re like to eat.
I didn’t keep some of the really thin long ones, so this doesn’t represent the total poundage of production, but certainly the amount I thought would be useable.
These are from my community garden that is always over planted and filled with tall stuff like trellised tomatoes, beans and bitter melon, so they do get some shading and crowding. Plus it is my first time trying growing in containers, which I’m doing since the voles have gotten so bad. I’ll wait until frost is imminent before harvesting the rest. Hopefully some of the other varieties will have done better.
Those skinny ones should be fine. I’ll keep ones even skinnier (1/2” diameter) and usually they still have enough substance to roast up as 3-4” tubular fries.
We finished eating the little bit the voles left us. Grocery store-started purples and jewel. Always so good. Next year, the bed becomes an impenetrable fortress!!
Beauregard harvest from September. Ten or twelve slips (can’t remember which) in a 4x8 raised bed. 32 pounds. Highly recommend Beauregard. They have stored a year for me at room temperature.
Will probably grow out Vardaman in 2026 because I need a smaller vine footprint. Beauregard is full vining. See pics.
Central Mississippi
@FarmGirl-Z6A I’d love to get your report cards on some of the Sandhill varieties you grew out. Any notable performers or failures? Thanks.
I planted some slips this year from Tatorman. The slips looked good, i planted them when i got them in Mid May…
but i checked today and its pretty much just roots at the top. maybe a small 1" x .25" sweet potato forming on one.
Can i just leave them in ground to get established for year 2 growing? or they will die off?
What was my issue? Need super soft soil? I had them in a clay/promix mix (but leans more towards clay this 1st year in that area) with no weeds and black plastic all around them. The vines grew well and filled out the area. All the leaves got eaten once towards mid August by a groundhog or raccoon i bet, but the leaves re-established themselves.
Here are a few plants I got from the USDA this spring and added to my collection.
PI 538289 Common Name: Morado (Peru)
The USDA listing said it’s a purple variety but for me it ended up being white skinned and white fleshed. Good production and gave us one monster sized root. Instead of Morado I should call it Blanco or Blanca? Who’s good at Spanish?
PI 538298 Common Name: Wennotz II (Peru)
Really well behaved compact tidy plant. Would be excellent for summer greens but it didn’t produce any storage sized roots. It would have to be kept alive indoors over the winter and I’m terrible at that.
PI 538306 Common Name: 529 (Guatemala, land race variety)
The USDA listing said it is orange skinned and purple fleshed which sounded fascinating, but for me it ended up being orange skinned and orange fleshed. It produced long straight roots.
PI 573297 Common Name: Purple (Myanmar)
Roots are purple skinned and white fleshed and very productive. This is probably the same variety that Sandhill and Baker Creek sell as Myanmar Purple
Which varieties did you plant?
I finally had success with sweet potatoes this year, growing them in a large pot with compost and promix. I started slips from our favorite one from the grocery store and we ended up with 2 heaping 5 gallon buckets. I had a few in the ground that did alright, but not nearly as well as the pots.
Realize the Okinawan ones need longer time to ripen but thought i could ripen those along with the other regular ones in Philly (zone 7a/b)
The only one on your list I’ve grown is Okinawan. I was surprised at how deep their roots can go. Last year I had a large potato that was easily 12 inches underneath the plant. You might have to dig down a ways just to make sure there aren’t actually any potatoes hiding there.
But its possible having the leaves eaten back in August caused the plants to put all of their energy back into regrowing leaves instead of sizing up roots.
I dug deeper and find a few small Yellow Jewels and a few even smaller Okanawans…
But most roots led to small babies like so:
Are slips the leftover root parts? Can i save those for next year?
I’ve put a few into water in the house, hoping it’ll grow greens over winter, then i can plant those out in spring.
the cured ones filled a medium box in the kitchen.
you can see there’s most and bigger of the red.
I’ve had no problems getting slips from real small ones like that.
nice!..
Ill put them in a pot tomorrow (they been in a ziplock all weekend)… Do I have to put them under lights or my window and have them leaf out … or they can go dormant in my attached garage?
@belowtheterrace - how did those “Wennotz II” plants turn out for you? It looks like USDA isn’t going to be sending out much in the near future, so I hope you are able to keep that interesting variety going in your garden.
For me they usually just sit in a tub with the rest of the sweet potatoes in the basement and come spring they have sprouts.
