If you’ve ever had trouble growing sweet potatoes, and can’t seem to get large delicious spuds out of the ground, I may have the solution you need. Come along and harvest sweet potatoes with me and I will discover what I have learned about this nutritious plant. There is a secret to getting large sweet potatoes and I will share it with you today.
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Black Gumbo shares our suburban, backyard, sustainable gardening efforts. We work a small-scale teaching garden, much like the typical Zone 9a backyard garden and raised beds, the kind of gardening accessible to all. We tend to take the slice of life approach and hope you will enjoy our family, our dog, our cooking, our adventures, and occasionally some commentary and advice. We love family, joy and friendship, and we invite you to enjoy these things with us!
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43 Comments
Does it hurt the forming of sweet potatoes to trim the leaves as you go?
Have you ever had your soil tested?
Thank you for this video. I have been planning to develop and grow Sweet Potato slips next year (1st time). You have kept me from making several novice mistakes.
I've watched alot of garden harvest since I've harvested my own sweet potatoes. And everyone who has been in the drought this season across the states have had a poor harvest. Your soil looked very dry. I don't think it had to do with the vines setting roots from my own experience over the years. It is true what you said but this year lack of good rain water I think was the problem. The first year I ever planted sweet potatoes not knowing that you shouldn't let the vines set roots I did. But that summer we had so much rain and I got a great harvest.
That explains how my sweet potatoes excaped
Could you grow the sweet potato vines vertically so that they can't root?
I've tried to grow sweet potatoes a couple of different times. I have VERY limited space/real-estate to grow what I grow and decided it just wasn't worth it. Every year in the Fall, Meier grocery here has local grown sweet potatoes at a ridiculously low price. I got them last years for 29 cents per pound! I can't grow them for that, plus I had virtually no luck in growing them either. The store-bought sweet potatoes were locally grown and 20 pounds cost me me a mere $5.80!
I actually had a decent harvest this year in Fort Worth. Planted Beauregard sweet potato slips (started indoors 2-26) in a large Vego bed on 5-3. The bed was heavily amended with purchased and homemade compost. Harvested after Halloween. My vines did grow to 20’ but they grew on top of the covered walkways in the garden so no rooting from the vines. You are right – we do learn from garden failures and can correct them next year.
Thanks for sharing this, Scott. I had big sweet potato plans for this year, but life threw our family some big curveballs too. Looking forward to getting an early start on the slips and coming out of the gate strong next spring.
I had a poor yeild on my last harvest of sweet potatoes as well. I like to eat the long thin ones raw. They taste a bit like a raw carrot that way. You could try trellising the sweet potato vines. I put hardware mesh around mine to keep rabbits out and it worked as a nice trellis as well.
I appreciate your video content. That is exactly what I found in my giant tub on my first try 3 years ago. Since then I have planted them in a leftover hill of planting soil… and each year it has progressively produced a bit better. Though I only have twice as many as each year previous. The experiment in process is interesting enough to make me keep trying. ( This year I discovered one can eat the leaves as well… so I harvested some twice a week to stirfry. Such a bonus! This alone makes it worth the continuing experiment for me!!)
Ugh. I got two, TWO! From a 6 x 3 foot bed.
If I may; the vines lifted from the bed display a lack of nutrition. K, Mg are the obvious elements. On that raised bed:
K – 1 cup sulfate of potash at planting, 1 cup when vines begin to run, 1 cup at flowering.
Mg – 1TBS epsom salts topical every other week.
Should see quite a difference.
I produced my largest crop of sweet potatoes, three rows in a 10 X 15 area, 6 bushels. As soon as the vines began to run I threw some dirt on them. Gave them plenty of water, and by harvest time patch was about 20 X 30 feet, and the vines were nearly three feet deep. There were a few smaller ones, and there were a few 3 plus, nearly four pounds. I think that the key is plenty to water. As a side note, I planted ten times the area this year and dug 1 1/2 bushels, but I didn't give them extra water in the dry period.
I totally failed last year and didn't even get anything orange. Keep trying!
I think you'll find that should you increase you irrigation frequency and volume, the visible limitation on root numbers and size will disappear.
Given sufficient moisture, each buried node will produce 2 storage roots.
Storage root numbers is determined very early in the lifecycle of the plant; not gradual as the plant grows.
Storage root size is determined proportional to nutrition and available soil moisture as the plant grows.
Overall, that particular crop has been grown in a moisture-deficit environment. Notice the necrotic leaves on the vine when it gets lifted.
A bed like the one in the video should have about 15 buried nodes, produce about 30 roots, weighing about 1lb each, and about 350 gallons of water applied over its growing life (not including rain).
And you're spot on when you say cutting the vines limits yield.
It's a plant hormonal response; severing the growing point of the vine (ends) reduces total yield weight by 20%-40%; depending on when and where the damage occurs.
LSU research center has excellent sweet potato resources accessible via the web.
How much weight can you get out of one plant if you don't let the vines root?
I have 180 Okra plants growing on my property and I been selling it for 10 bucks a pound and it's selling😃 like hotcakes, I'm just started getting my money back I've spent on my garden the last 3 years, I have Napa cabbage, peppers and Diakon etc. coming soon
I talk to my toads too💕
Toads are a welcome guest in my garden they are helping eradicate the snails.
My potato harvest this year was less-than-expected too. Hopefully next year will be better for everyone.
Someone gifted me a bunch of dark purple Asian sweet potatoes, she said. I broadforkeded a new area, not knowing it was too near a large tree trunk…I did a good layer of chicken poo and pine, cedar from their coop, and plenty of water, in the beginning (life got busy) my harvest was a surprise, many large good looking, too many carrot types, several big ones, and 1 the size of a small pumpkin, it looks like several grew onto a large one…we found lots of rocks when we harvested, I guess that helps explain the skinny ones. They are a deep purple inside, and are quite dry. Some have almost a root type thread run their length…interesting harvest and eating! Thanks for the tips, I did a bit of pulling up the runners, but I also cut some for treats for my chickens…and thanks for your honesty! Gardeners are always both teachers and students, I think. God bless you.
i place a couple of layers of cardboard around the slips so they can not root. I did not know you were on the Texas coast. I have a second home in Port O'Connor,
I tried a few experiments with my sweet potatoes this year. The plants I grew in a large raised bed with a trellis for the vines did best, with the ones the ones in a 250-gallon grow bag and vines spilling onto weed cloth (nothing for them to root into) doing well also. The ones in 250-galling grow bag that I let root in soil did poorly as far as harvest, but looked spectacular. All were the same variety from the same source and the same bundle of slips, planted in the same soil mix at the same time and treated the same.
Like you, I’ll have slips and seed potatoes for next year, so I can plant earlier. I’ll be trellising them or using weed barrier to prevent the vines from rooting.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, both good and less than great. I feel like every experience in the garden is anything but bad. I mean, we’re out in the garden! It can’t be too bad. 🙃
That's about the looks of my 4×4 bed. I also didn't get them planted as soon as I hoped. Saving them all for next season's slips.
What about trellising so they don’t get the chance to root at all?
Had a few rattlesnake green bean plants – kinda forgot about them – checked them a couple of days ago and had enough beans to make a small mess just for myself – brought them in and laid them on the counter – went back about an hour later and only had 2 beans left – one of my cats like raw green beans!
Sure was glad to watch this! I like growing sweet potatoes and this video taught what to do in the future to get a better harvest! Thank you!
We also had less this year. We just put smalls back into ground now. Will add new slips in February. We agree you can't allow them to travel.
You can keep the vines moving upward on a trellis. They naturally will move down towards the ground every day but it takes just a few minutes each day to redirect upward.
Scott, I want to thank you for recommending "Tales From The Green Valley". I can't tell you how much I am enjoying it!
Sorry about your sweet potatoes. I'm not a fan, I'll eat them but they are just not one of my favorites. Not even in a pie. (And I love pie!)
Always learning from my mistakes. Fun to experiment. TFS
My motto this year was, fruit, seed or compost, it’s all a win! My Murasaki weren’t great this season either but I think their the sweetest. Thanks for the post💚🍠
Overall it wasn’t the best year for me. Had a rodent problem that stole so much of my food. Still fighting with them. They ate my tomatoes and my sweet potatoes and now they’re eating my radishes. We’ve killed a bunch but they just keep coming.
I dont think its anything u did. My experience was same with that variety. it wasnt nearly as productive as thr common white ones.. It creates a ton of greens and few sweet potatoes.
I'm not a sweet potato fan, but I enjoyed learning about their growth habits. There is so much to learn when gardening! It keeps the mind and the body active. Hope you get lots of slips to grow next year, and have a fantastic harvest then!
I’ve learned so much from you over the years. Thank you for all you do. I’m wondering it’s too early to start some seeds indoors for spring. I’m in 8b so I suspect we should start ours a couple weeks later than you.
I trellis vining plants for two reasons, now three.
My two reasons are, fruit is more waist-high, which means I don't have to bend over (6'6" tall & 74 yo)
AND
Copperhead snakes like to lay in the cool shade, which vining plants' leaves provide between their leaves and the soil.
Relax. I only hate two kinds of snakes.
I am in the AZ low desert Zone 9B. Summer was brutal, most seeds did not germinate, the ones that did stay tiny. One eggplant grew huge and not one fruit on it. Cucumbers burnt up before they could grow. The only success I had was sweet peas and a Japanese eggplant. Since horse Bermuda hay has gone up drastically in price I have converted my veggie garden into another pasture to grow Bermuda to feed the horses. In my area just water any dirt patch and Bermuda will take it over. I'm tired of wasting money on slips and seeds that don't make it. And I'm too old to want to deal with all the maintenance . At least the horses and my purse will be happier. I know there are people out here that grow great plants, for some reason I'm just not one of them.
Were I live I use a black ground cloth to make the soil stay warmer
Were I live I use a black ground cloth to make the soil stay warmer