My first year growing sweet potatoes...
This year I've had a real go at growing Sweet Potatoes. And, as usual, some things have worked well and some, not so much. This is the story of my 2020 Sweet Potatoes.
It was back in early June, just as we were coming out of Lockdown 1 that I took delivery of some sweet potato plants - through the post (that's how I've received a lot of my seeds and tubers this year). These were small plants which I quickly transplanted into pots and put in the greenhouse to get them established as they are quite tender plants. Then, 3 at a time, they all went into 'raised container beds' of sorts, filled with a mix of well rotted manure and some grow bag soil. I had two at the allotment in old reused building supply bags (containing more manure than soil) and one in a plastic barrel in my south facing garden (with more soil in than manure).
They are slightly different to traditional potatoes in that the habit of sweet potato foliage is more like a climber, so I stake the plants rather than earth them up as you would your typical spud. I also added a cardboard 'collar' so that I could get more soil into the plastic container, in the hope that this would give me a greater harvest. More on that later.
And as long as you keep them well watered, that's pretty much it - for (what turned out to be) four to five months.
They grow, spread and sprawl with little pest damage or disease. They kept going until the early October frost, at which point, the plant leaves started to wither and I went straight into to harvest mode.
Harvesting...where I probably learnt most if I'm honest. What I found was that as I lifted the foliage and pulled it out of the containers, the potatoes were left stuck in the soil. It might just be something I experienced but sweet potatoes are not like the more traditional normal potato varieties which can also double up as a practical method of breaking up the soil (even if the harvest isn't that good!)'...no my sweet potatoes tended to get stuck in the compacted soil around them and would snap if I pulled them out with too much force.
Here's a couple I managed to successfully excavate so you can see what I mean.
So how successful was the harvest, and what's my verdict?
Well, below on the left is my harvest from the two allotment raised beds and on the right the 'fruit' of the container with the collar in the garden.
The first thing you'll notice straight away is the difference in size. The 'manured' sweet potatoes are much bigger than the soil based ones which are more carrot like (long and thin) in growth (so the collar obviously didn't help!).
The second thing (which you'll have to take my word for) is that both harvests had a really strong but unusual fresh scent - almost a perfume (In fact I'd almost say too perfumed!).
And the final thing - the taste test? Well, so far we've mashed, curried, chipped and souped the larger potatoes and everytime they've tasted great.
So in summary, pretty easy to grow, giving a good yield, and plenty of different ways to eat what you produce. That seems a pretty good set of reasons for growing them again next year!
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