1st time growing sweet potatoes from shop-bought tubers

[chadspad]

Ive managed to grow them successfully by just cutting them up and putting them in a pot - they sprouted (it did take a really long time) and I planted them out and had sweet potatoes. Your way looks much more interesting tho and fun to be able to see them growing - good job

Have actually found a garden centre here in France that sells the already grown plants - sweet potatoes are obviously catching on at last!

[demi]

finally got round to taking a picture.


we are in the ground!

and they are actually growing! 100% sucsess rate at the moment. thats 5 plants out of 5 cuttings rooted and transpplanted.
got another 2 cuttings rooting in water at the moment. the rest of the shoots on the potatoes are small. i dont know if we will get any more decent shoots in time. i hope the ones in the ground get enought time to grow edible sized tubers.

we've had quite a lot of rain here the past few weeks, lots of flash floods and iv had some seedlings drown underwater. the postaoes are earthed up slightly so they were never fully underwater, but still, im worried they might rot. but they look good, dont seem to have been damaged, lets hope the roots undergraound are in good condition too.


we planted them into well gug soil which hasnt been manured this year, but has had a lot of humus in the top soil when it was dug over. iv read if there is too much manure they just grow lots of foliage and no tubers.

notice that the top one is in the shade, the sun moves round and they all get full sun for the majority of the day. we're limited for space in the garden at the moment, otherwise they should of been planted out in full sun, away from the trees.

[demi]

Iv just planted some more cuttings from the sprouting tubers. So now iv got 11 plants in the ground. The first 5 I planted I think will do ok but I'm not sure about the others. I think the ones I'v just planted today wont grow big enough before it starts to get cold. But we'll see.
I'm debating what to do with the sprouting potatoe tubers I'v got still in glass jars of water. One of them hasn't rooted or anything so I think its done. But the other two are still growing. I was thinking to just plant them in the ground. But then I'm worried they wont have enought time to grow. Or i could plant them in a big pot on the balconey and bring them indoors when the weather starts to get cold and keep them going inside until they are ready to harvest. Or I could just keep them going in the glass jars of water.....I wonder how long they would last like that? Then i could take more cuttings off them to plant in pots indoors over winter........

Maybe I'll plant one whole tuuber, and contine the other in water as long as possible, planting the cuttings from it when they are big enough.........

[demi]

So iv started covering the sweet potates at night with a big sheet of plastic. Its down to 10 degrees at night now but still reaching 30 during the day and we havent had rain for 3 months, apart from a couple of thundery days last week but it was only spitting. Still, im not having to water daily now as its not so hot anymore. Hoping the weather holds out as long as possible, give them more time to grow to edible sizes.

The two potatoes i was sprouting in the glass jars of water i have planted in a big tub which i will bring in when it gets cold and grow them on on the living room window. Planning on using them for next years cuttings, if possible, and will be eventually digging them up and hopfully will get a few more spuds. As soon as i planted them in the tub they started to flurrish and are growing better than the ones in the ground! Probably because they both had extencive root formations.

[demi]

Just found this lovely piece of work from an agracultural collage on harvesting and curing sweet potatoes. Thanks for that

http://www.caes.uga.edu/commodities/fru ... potato.pdf

[demi]

Dug up the sweet potatoes this morning and we actually do have edible sized tubers!



Got some really small ones that hopfully i can use for next year, and probably about 2 meals worth of bigger ones. They're not huge like the origonal ones we bought from the supermarket, most of them are long and thinner and there's a couple of fatter stumpyer ones. Im sure if id planted them earlier they would have had moer time to grow bigger.
But over all that was a sucsess

I left them in the sun this morning to dry out, turning them over once. Now iv got them packed in egg box cardboard trays inside plastic bags that iv periced multiple times to make holes. They need to cure like that now in the living room where its warmest, got them on a shelf above the wood burner, for a few weeks before we can eat them.

The leaves on sweet potatoes we're vurtually untouched by pests. However, the other potatoes i planted in a tub outside has had somthing eating its leaves and they are now full of holes, but i think they'll be fine.

A couple of the tubers have been eaten by somthing too. Most likely mole crickets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_cricket somthing which iv never seen before, i don't think we have them in Brittain, do we? We found one at the begining of the year when we were digging the soil over before the potatoes went in. It's creapy looking, really weird insect with mole like front limbs for digging. Its also almost blind as it lives underground, eating roots and other bugs and worms ect.
Might have to concider planting them somwhere on the other side of the garden next year.

So yeah, im right chuffed about that will be having sweet potatoes in the christmas dinner this year

Sorry no pictures, that baby was chewing the USB cable for the camera and now it doesn't work so i cant get them onto the computer. I was using the cable to charge the camer too so now the batter is dead and iv no way to charg it. Sucks.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Well I'm impressed. I think I might have to have a go. Did you know that sweet potato is closely related to "morning glory?" That usually grows quite well here, so I'm hoping sweet potato might.

[diggernotdreamer]

I have three named varieties growing in my polytunnel, I planted them out first week of May, first time I have ever grown them. I have harvested a few and picked a whopper today, which I cooked and it tasted very nice in spite of not having been cured. We have had no serious frosts here and they are under fleece to keep them warm, and they are still bulking up, I have a bit of a furtle every now and then and over the last couple of weeks they have bulked up quite a bit. Looking forward to seeing what we have in the next few weeks

[demi]

I was wanting to leave ours longer and we've been watching the weather forcast. Its still sunny here but there's rain forcast for the weekend and my husband says once that happens the temperature will drastically drop and it will start freezing at night. So we didn't want to risk the cold damage. We'd been covering them with fleece at night from the end of september, which maybe wasn't nessesary but i was really paranoid about the cold damaging them. But the leaves remained untouched until this week when i picked a couple of yellow leaves off them. I'v read to do that to prevent the damage spreading down them stem and into the tubers which will make them go off easily in stoarage.