Have you grown sweet potates here before? They are generally not considered a great choice for this area as it is seldom is warm enough long enough for much tuber production. Hard to maintain that minimum 75F temp consistently anywhere west of the Cascades :-)

PNW is generally not great enough to grow sweet potatoes.

We grew "Purple Majesty" here last year, that is a purple-fleshed regular potato. A bit dry/grainy, good for mashing or baking. A good source for anthocyanins, if that is your goal.

Great info!!! Thank you both. No, I've never grown sweet potatoes before just regular potatoes.

I just dug up my sweet potato plants. They are NOT purple fleshed ones but yellow fleshed and one type had pink skins. This was a sort-of experiment to see what would happen.

They were not started by making slips, but were started from small organic sweet potatoes. One was started in my greenhouse and put in a large planter. This was put outside in a warm, sheltered area with lots of sun. The two others were put into a raised bed.

The one in the pot produced a couple of medium sized tubers and about a dozen thin tubers. If this plant had had a month or so more of hot weather I would have had a nice bunch.

The other two, in the raised bed didn't do even that well. But I realized too late that my beans were going to shade the potato bed way more than I thought it would. So they had less sun and more cooling from wind,

We will try them and see how they are. I think that the thin ones could be used, cut up and sauteed or something like that. Or maybe roasted and used as part of a veggy medley.

I think I will try again next year. They would never feed a large family depending on the garden but for my husband and myself, they might produce enough sweet potatoes to keep us happy. But they definitely need to be started earlier, in the greenhouse, and put out in a sunny, sheltered spot if they are going to do better next year.

a.m.

Thanks arleanm for the info, sounds encouraging.

I bought the most beautiful rich purple sweet potatoes at Safeway recently. But they were very dry and tough. No amount of baking softened or sweetened them. They looked super though.

It's a good idea to put hedges or fencing around vegetable plots anyway, as many crops grown like it warm. And it makes a more comfortable environment for the gardener.