A few weeks ago I dropped a fairly large sweet potato in an old plastic peanut butter jar filled with water to make some sweet potato slips. Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite vegetables. To me having a simple baked sweet potato at dinner time almost seems wrong, it tastes like I am eating dessert for dinner! But of course the sweet potato is probably one of the healthiest vegetables around.
It took a month before the sweet potato achieved the level of rooting you see in the picture. Now that it has roots I can gently remove the rooted pieces and plant them in the garden on a cool morning or overcast day. Any sweet potato slips that don’t have enough roots to plant directly out in the garden can be placed in a jar of water to give them more time to grow roots. Over the summer they will grow new tubers for our family to devour later! Trust me – they won’t last long! Sweet potatoes are extremely frost sensitive so don’t plant them outside until all danger of frost has past. For a companion planting I may put the sweet potatoes together with bush beans.
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Sweet potatoes are great. I think they are one of the best vegetables around. I have to agree with your statement that it's almost like eating dessert!
Last year I had decorative sweet potato vine which produced one potato. Then I had a plant which never did. I kept both around all winter and have now mixed them up. We might have had a grocery store potato in a glass too. BUT! There were four tiny potatoes growing in one of the pots I put outside last week. It isn't in a garden setting at all, but I'm going to be checking all the locations I put these plants when it reaches harvest time! (Which is when?)
I don't grow them here but after this post I'm wondering why not. It may be on my list soon. Thanks for the info!
I do not grow them…I will take a sweet potato, baked, fried, raw it doesn't matter, over a white potato any day!
I have grown them once with great results and you are making me wonder why I haven't done it again!
I have been trying so hard to like sweet potatoes because I know they are better for me. I'm not quite there yet!
Love those sweet potatoes. I have been thinking of growing them here. At least try. I know we grew them in Tn when I was a kid.
Stan,
I can't get enough of them- baked and fried – both ways are great!
MKM,
You can harvest them at almost any point but the longer you leave them in the ground the larger they become. About a hundred days is a good guideline.
Tine,
You've gotta grow them! You could even try them in pots.
Darla,
I agree completely – although I do like a good Yukon gold baked potato…
Ferne,
You should give them another try! Too delicious not to!
Luisa,
They are great for you, I hope you start enjoying them soon. I went for many years never appreciating the taste of the sweet potato then I found out what I was missing. Try sprinkling a little brown sugar on top and seeing if that agrees with your taste buds!
Lola,
You could try a plant or two in a large pot. They might even come back if you leave the tubers in the ground in Florida.
I compost in my idle vegetable bed and one popped up last year. I ended up getting two potatoes off it. I recently found two slips in this years' bed so I moved them to a more fertile bed and hope to have better luck this year.