Did you know sweet potato vines have these pretty purple blossoms hidden under the greenery? I didn’t either, but I’ve found when you follow the sounds of the Larrapin bees, you find all sorts of blooms you never noticed. I’ve got to dig the sweet potatoes early this week—ready or not— because our first hard frost is predicted for Thursday night. Wow, we’ve made it round the spiral through yet another growing season….
This year I only grew the small, super sweet potatoes I got at the co-op. Mendy nearly cooked them several times before I got them safely to the potting table… They are ‘Japanese’ type sweet potatoes and my knowledge pretty much ends there. There were two kinds, orange and yellow fleshed with the names Jewel and Garnet.
With some help from farmer friend Cheri, I managed to grow my own slips and have been eating many dishes with the golden fleshed (Garnet) super-sweet potatoes for weeks now. They are like candy, no kidding. So far, it’s the Garnets that have produced. Back in this post, I was trying to root them by cutting the potato in half and propping them up on toothpicks like I’d seen online. It did work, but was a mess, many rotted, and it was hard to change the water, which gets scummy often, at least till the roots start keeping it clear
Farmer Cheri told me her mom just laid the whole potato on its side in a pie pan with a little water. Works like a charm and produces a lot more slips that way since they come mostly from the ends of the potato. Thanks Cheri & her Mom! You do have to keep an eye on the shallow water because the mama sweet potato drinks quite a bit… You have to start early in the year too as the slips are slow to form. I was rooting potato by the last days of February in order to have the slips ready to go a few weeks after last frost. Don’t bother trying to plant early as these guys do *nothing* till it heats up and can’t handle even a touch of frost.
I’d always heard that you want to plant your sweet potatoes on the poorest soil you have. Otherwise, on rich soil, they’ll be all vine, no root. And that’s TRUE! Of course I had to try this out with a batch on the thinnest, palest (most newly dug and unamended) bed in the garden. While it’s wasn’t a large harvest, we harvested a nice batch. The ones I planted nearby on a two year old, fairly good bed had lush vines that nearly took over the adjoining beds…but no taters. I’ve let them stay to see if they’ll produce late, so this week will tell the tale since they have to be out of the ground before being touched by frost (or else they’ll rot more quickly in storage, so I’ve read…) So sweet potatoes are a nice crop to break in a new piece of ground.
The flower above is from the rich bed, so I don’t know if they will produced full sized roots…these are pretty small potatoes anyway…nothing like the monstrous Beauregards we grew last year. For 2012, I’ll be doing both varieties because the Beauregards, which are the usual big orange-fleshed variety, last the whole winter in storage and produce a HUGE amount of food from one garden bed. When we dug them in 2010 we joked about ‘birthing the babies’ they were so huge. I’m not sure about the sweet Japanese ones as regards storage, we’ll see. Their amazing taste, however, has put them on my ‘must grow’ list! Be ready for first frost NWA! (Not like me in this post, out digging in the night with a headlamp! )
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
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