Grow Sweet Potatoes
To grow Sweet Potatoes is a real pleasure. The vines are beautiful with edible leaves. The flowers are a wonderful accent to the garden. For me there is a great therapeutic value throughout the entire gardening growing season. I love the peace and the beautiful connection I have with the Earth when I grow Sweet Potatoes and other garden plants. Then there is always the reward of the harvest!
This blog post will focus on the process of harvesting Sweet Potatoes. This year I documented the process in the form of three videos.
Grow Sweet Potatoes Part 1: Frost Bit Leaves
My dad told me several years ago that Sweet Potatoes should be harvested directly after the first frost. I know this isn’t an absolute gardening fact, but it is a good point of reference. Sweet Potatoes can be harvest at any time they are large enough to cook. Many gardeners will claim that it is best to harvest before the frost has a chance to damage the vines. This could be better, but watch the video to see my method and explanation.
Grow Sweet Potatoes Part 2: Dig ’em Up!
In this particular case I had a bit of difficulty getting some of the tubers out of the soil because it wasn’t as loose and fluffy as it should have been. There was also an issue with the gardening tools damaging the crops. In this video I explain those issue and discuss how I overcame them.
Grow Sweet Potatoes Part 3: Amend the Soil
As a gardener you know that you can always amend the soil to make conditions better for your crops. After this harvest I decided to amend the soil in this raised bed garden to give a little boost to the crops that get planted this coming Spring.
Did you grow Sweet Potatoes this year? How did it turn out? I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
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Did you try eating the leaves? Where did you get your slips and have you considered growing your own? I haven’t watched the videos yet but I will as soon as I’m on WiFi.
Yes, the leaves were great cooked up like Spinach. I participated in a group buy of slips with a local Permaculture group. I don’t know where they bought them from.
Great article!
Thanks! 🙂
This past spring I planted ornamental sweet potatoes in a big planter and when I pulled the plants out this fall there was a big tuber on the end of one vine. I decided to put it in water and see if it would grow. So I did and it did and it’s going great guns. My question is that since the leaves are out and vining on many of the leaves I see little grainy things that look like salt of sugar grains on the leaves all along the veins. Do you have any idea as to what this is and should I get rid of the potato vines and all in case this is a fungus type thing. Or would I do better to go ahead and plant the tuber and see what happens.
Just curiosity. I had planned on replanting the new plant in the spring but don’t want to keep it going if this is something that will spread to other plants that I am overwintering.
Would you be selling any of tree spinach plant chaya
I won’t be selling any Chaya anytime soon. Maybe someday in the future when I get enough established around the farm I might.