Hi, these images are the harvest of one purple sweet potato plant (beni imo). I planted beginning June and today is mid-september. So I decided to dig out one plant out of 7 to see. This is the first time I try to grow sweet potatoes.
It is probably my fault (partially). Maybe I should have worked the soil better and deeper, since I noticed how difficult it was to dig out what you see. An I learned the lesson, why I am supposed to pile up the soil and not let it flat.
Is it worth to wait longer, before digging out the rest? I'm on the westcoast of Bretagne (France). Our frost here usually is rare and very late.
Is it even worth curing this? There are little holes in the most tubers and the leafs are being eaten up by something since a couple of days.
How am I supposed to process these finger-tubers?
by East-Wind-23
2 Comments
You got purple carrots and a foetus instead 🙂
Sweet potatoes like a hot summer and a light soil that is sandy or at least fluffy with plenty of organic matter. They do not like a lot of fertility, particularly nitrogen. My hunch seeing these is that your soil is either too wet or too high in clay, or both. The long thin roots are likely to be stringy and not much good for eating, but you could save them for seed for next season. Definitely try to make raised beds next time, and mulch around the beds as the vines begin to spread and pick the vines up every few days or after a rain to block their making roots down except right in the beds where you plant them, so that the roots form in the fluffy part and not out on the flat. Add fine organic matter poor in nitrogen…things like sawdust or fallen leaves finely shredded come to mind….put this a few cm deep on the beds and till or dig it in. If your climate rarely hits 25C that will be an issue too….white potatoes might be a better choice for a starchy root staple.