Sweet Potato Invasion

Could not help but to brag... Here they are...

The best thing about these sweet potatoes is that I did not plant them. They grew from the remnants of the last year's harvest. I always leave the smallest roots in the ground when I harvest sweet potatoes, and the ones that survive frost start vining and fruiting once again. Another good thing about this amazing vegetable is that it breaks down hard soils. Sweet potatoes are relatively easy to care for, just water when they are young and make sure the soil has at least some nutrients in it. That's about it. 

Now, part of my Thanksgiving dinner is covered, for free. :)

Harvesting Sweet Potatoes

The time to clean and prepare the beds for the cool season planting is here. But there are other things still growing in the garden, our summer favorites - sweet potatoes, okra, and cow peas. So it is time to start harvesting sweet potatoes. The harvesting process in itself is fairly simple, just pull the vines (and oh, yes, they can be very long), and then feel the ground with your hands for the tubers. Alternately, you can use a shovel to just turn the soil, but I prefer to use my hands (with the disposable gloves to protect from ant bites). Sweet potatoes do not normally sit deep in the ground, and often you can even see the tip of the potato above the ground. Finally, even if some potatoes are missed and overwinter, the better. I have so many volunteer potatoes in my garden that I don't even plant the slips anymore and always have plenty of sweet potato to harvest; once you have them, you will always have them.

This bowl of potatoes was harvested just from one partial bed, I would say 4 feet by 10 feet, all volunteers. Free food, what can be better! Now I am facing the task of preserving the harvest.

Depending on the amount of sweet potatoes you harvest, no preservation could be needed at all. If you only have a few pounds, then just brush off the dirt, lay them on a cardboard in the sun for a few hours to harden, and you can store them in the pantry. Usually, that's all I do with the harvest.

On the other hand, if you have a large harvest, then it probably would not fit into a regular pantry. Authoritative sources, such as University of Florida, advise to store sweet potatoes in "cool storage" - between 55 to 65 degrees. Well, that's great, but we don't exactly have root cellars in Florida, and the average house garage is far from being "cool" storage, even in the winter. Indigenous people throughout the ages stored sweet potatoes either in sand, or in ash, or in hay. These methods would work even in a hot garage or other storage, but the potatoes themselves should be absolutely perfect, with no nicks or damage; otherwise they will certainly start to rot, and infect their neighbors in the storage bins.

This year I decided to can my sweet potato harvest, and here's why: canning is a sure way to preserve these root vegetables with little risk of spoilage, and the subsequent cooking is practically non-existent, just heat up and eat. I don't care for "sweet" sweet potatoes, such as pies, but like them in a way of home fries with salt and cayenne. Canned sweet potatoes can be perfect for either scenario.

So, to can sweet potatoes all you need is a pressure canner (I have a cheapo Presto from WalMart), some canning jars and other paraphernalia related to canning. All that can be easily obtained from WalMart or Tractor Supply.

Peel and slice sweet potatoes in about 1/2 to 1/4 inch slices, and put in water. They would turn dark immediately if left in the open air that oxidizes them. As you can see, the water in this basin is quite murky, that's because sweet potatoes have a lot of starch in them:

Once all potatoes are cut up, sterilize canning jars (I use quarts) and stuff raw potato slices into the jars. This is called "raw packing". Shake the jars as you stuff the potatoes to minimize dead space. Add a tea spoon of coarse salt (a preservative), and fill with boiling water. Then, can at 10 pounds pressure for about an hour to an hour and a half.

Pressure canned like that, the potatoes can store for a long time at room temperature, and used whenever you have a hankering for some Thanksgiving-tasting side dish.

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Last of sweet potato harvest

I have to admit, I slacked off. Sweet potatoes were supposed to be harvested in October, or at least before the frost. But I covered them well with mulch and they survived the one and only frost we had so far. Yesterday I decided it was time to prepare the bed for new plantings, so I dug all of them out. That was over fifteen pounds (I weighted them) of fresh organic sweet potatoes:

Now, that's not the whole harvest, I took quite a bit of potatoes out of the ground prior to that. What's amazing, this abundance came from mere six or so slips grown from store-bought sweet potatoes. The bad thing, if you look at it this way, once you have them, you will always have them - sweet potatoes, peanuts, and horseradish. Beware if you plant. I already have sweet potato leaves breaking from the ground where least expected.

I am going to start the new slips shortly to be planted in April or so and harvested again in October.

Grocery store gifts: sweet potatoes and peanuts

It's harvest time!

Sometime in July I planted sweet potato slips grown from a store-bought potato, as well as some peanuts, from a grocery store bag as well. The sweet potato harvest in a picture below is just from one slip; and that's what you should expect usually, six to ten potatoes from one slip. Sweet potatoes are pretty undemanding, they will grow in slightly fertilized sand, in fact these grew in just that, very poor sandy soil.

Peanuts do not demand awesome soil either, as a member of legume family they fix their own nitrogen. The harvest in this picture is just from one peanut. Not a bad outcome, somewhere from ten to twenty peanuts from one. I imagine, if I plant a pound of peanuts next year, I will have twenty pounds harvest, that will make a huge bag.

I tasted one peanut and it was still quite raw. The kernels should be somewhat darker in color; and the plant leaves themselves should turn yellow or light brown, indicating that the "children" are taking in the nutrients. I will give them another month, after that I will take another sample. Peanuts are an indeterminate vegetable, so we cannot count on a 100% maturity; as long as most of the peanuts mature the harvest should be deemed as a success.

The beauty of a garden is that once you grow something, it will always be there. I have tons of volunteer tomatoes, peppers, dill and bok choy. Sweet potatoes and peanuts are self-propagating as well. Since it is impossible to dig out every little root, they will continue giving for the seasons to come.

Sweet potato harvest

Back in July I planted some sweet potato slips from a grocery store potatoes, and now, in October, it is time to harvest the crop. I was astounded by the size of the potatoes:

Just a few of them weighted at four pounds, but total of six pounds from two little twigs grown from a potato:

You can see on these pictures that potatoes are cracked and split, this is because we had so much rain lately. These potatoes are still very edible, but for the storage you need potatoes that are intact. This is why it is advised to grow sweet potatoes in hills, that is in soil piled up well above the ground to provide good drainage. I do not have the space in my garden to dedicate to storage sweet potatoes, but if this is your goal, you need to grow them either in raised beds or in hills.

Usually, it is expected to harvest two to five pounds of sweet potatoes from every slip, depending on the fertility of the soil and growing conditions. But hey, would you complain if you grew even one pound of potatoes per slip from a store bought potato? This is free food at it's best.

Sweet potatoes from store bought potato

We can still plant sweet potatoes in June. In fact, they can be planted anytime from beginning of April through second week of July and harvested in October and November. You can purchase sweet potato slips, but you can also grow your own potato slips from a store bought potato. A note of caution, a store potato might be treated with the retardant agent to prevent growing. I however never had that problem in my efforts of growing the slips. So, get yourself some sweet potatoes from the store, insert three toothpicks to hold the potato in suspension and submerge the lower part in water:

In about a couple of weeks the potato will start growing slips. You can expect six to ten slips from one potato. Once the slip is about six inches long, break it off the potato and insert into another jar filled with water, like this:

The slips will grow new roots and will be ready to be transplanted into the garden in about two to three weeks. Once they are in the garden, water them every day until they are established. Here's a sweet potato vine hiding under a young okra:



If sweet potatoes are grown in a fertile loose soil, you can expect to harvest four to ten potatoes from one slip. Enjoy!