Long story short - it was by accident! I was just going to grow this sweet potato vine for leafy greens. Yet one large sweet potato beneath the vines grew to weigh 16 pounds / 7.3 kilograms.
How To Grow Sweet Potatoes
The easiest way to grow sweet potatoes is to get some sweet potato slips, which are simply live sweet potato vine cuttings. The best time to grow them is when the weather gets warm. They are very cold sensitive. Therefore, any temperature near frost point will kill their vines.
- Start by inserting the root-end of slip into a 3-inch pot filled with soil and leaving it in the shade so it won't dry out by direct sunlight before growing roots.
- It will only take one week or even less before you can see roots almost coming out from the bottom holes of the pot.
- Then, it's time to transplant it into the soil at a full-sun location. Sweet potato tuber needs room to grow so the soil will need to be loose. They don't like standing water so the soil needs to be able to drain water quickly after heavy rain. I have sandy soil in my garden so there is no problem because they are loose and can easily drain the excessive rainwater off.
- Cover the soil with organic matters. I use wood chips from the waste stream. As the organic matter breaks down, it gives nutrients to the sweet potatoes and retains moisture for them to use.
- In a hot and wet tropical or subtropical climate, it only takes 3 months for them to reach normal harvest size. If you don't harvest them, they will continue to grow into odd shapes as seen in my previous post. The good news is they don't become fibrous. The bad news is bugs can start eating them and turning them into humus - good for the bugs and your garden, but not for you if you intend to harvest them to eat.
- If you live further north and do not have a hot summer, you can experience growing them in a greenhouse or a poly low tunnel to speed up their growth or to prolong the growing season for them to reach a good size.
How Did One Sweet Potato Turn Into a 16-pound / 7.3-kilogram Giant
- Instead of harvesting tubers after 3 months, we were harvesting the leaves to cook. Therefore, it had one whole year to grow to that size.
- It was next to a Hugelkultur, made of wood logs and wood chips, which broke down into humus slowly and fed it day and night.
- It was next to a volunteer nitrogen fixer, which fed the nitrogen to it constantly.
The largest darker purple one in normal shape on the bottom right is 1 lb 12 3/8 oz (or 805 g) while the giant one on the top weighs 16 lb / 7.3 kg!
I showed how I cooked this giant sweet potato in my previous post. Thank you for stopping by today. I'll see you next time.