Year's supply of sweet potatoes

[Nicos]

Well done on the quantity!
- very impressive- so much so, you’ve got me thinking that I might well give them a bash again next year
Interesting about the need for watering /feeding- it’s always a learning curve isn’t it?

[Snoop Puss]

Still not a bad harvest, ameno. About 10% down on last year's?

Well worth growing. Congratulations.

[Snoop Puss]

Hi, ameno. Over on the chitchat thread, a few people are talking about growing sweet potatoes this year and I've pointed them to this very useful thread. Do you have any other tips to add that might help people?

Thanks.

[Nicos]

Thanks for finding this thread Snoop.
Hope peeps don’t mind , but I’m going to sticky it….I’ll need all the help I can get with my plant!

[ameno]

Hi, ameno. Over on the chitchat thread, a few people are talking about growing sweet potatoes this year and I've pointed them to this very useful thread. Do you have any other tips to add that might help people?

Thanks.

Nothing more than I already wrote on the previous page, I'm afraid.

Well, actually, I suppose there is one thing: don't underestimate early autumn cold. Last year my plants got hit by a very light frost in mid-October, enough to blacken maybe 10% of the leaves and nothing more. But come harvest time, 3 large-ish tubers were rotting in the ground, and 3 or 4 more started rotting in storage. This has literally never happened to me before, and I am pretty certain that it's the cold that was to blame for it, even though there is no way the tubers themselves actually froze (even the air temperature was still above 0).

[Snoop Puss]

Thanks, ameno. It'll be interesting to see what other people's experiences are.

[KJessi]

I grew some last year, got a lot of leaves which I actually used as ground cover for eggplants and roselle hibiscus. The hibiscus didn't do great, but I had eggplants for the first time ever so I was happy.

Used the leaves for cooking in a stew, as recommended by a Filipino friend, but I honestly couldn't taste any different than usual greens used in a stew.

I never got round to checking if there were tubers, because the year before it was just leaves.

I've got 3 in pots right now, given by my Filipino friend, so hopefully they last long enough for me to put them in the ground, under black plastic like ameno. And use fleece once the weather turns. Thanks, ameno.

[starloc]

Dont forget that you can boost your numbers of sweet potato plants and even keep them in the house for next year by rooting cuttings, as they start spreading everywhere , take cuttings about 8 inch long , remove the lower leaves and stick it in a 3inch wide pot of compost, after a couple of weeks plant it out and as long as you do it early on like may/june/july you get tubers this year from the new plants, or take them a bit later and keep them in the warm over winter, take cuttings from the tips of those when they get too big and have lots of plants for next year. they even get mini tubers in the pots over winter so when potted up a big pot in the house they will give you big tubers mid winter.

[JoaoLeaftide]

39kg from 11 plants is seriously impressive. I tried sweet potatoes for the first time last year and got mostly rat tails, so clearly spacing was my problem. Going to try the black plastic and wider spacing this year, cheers for the detail ameno.

[JoaoLeaftide]

38kg is a serious haul. The whites being disappointing in a damp summer makes sense, they really do need heat to bulk up. Have you found the purples hold their colour well after cooking or do they fade out?