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oldokie

sweet potatoes

oldokie
9 years ago

I was digging in the crabgrass today and found my sweet potato plants and I found some tubers under them.
When do i pull them If i remember right dad had me pull them right before a frost or i could have just removed the vines do not remember it has been 50 yrs

Comments (18)

  • Macmex
    9 years ago

    If you can wait until next month, you'll probably get a better harvest. Your memory of your father's advice is correct.

    George
    Tahlequah, OK

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    You can harvest them any time you wish. They are not like Irish potatoes---the plants will not die back to tell you that it is time to harvest. Most sweet potato varieties reach a nice size and a nice degree of maturity about 3-4 months after they were planted, so it really is up to you when to harvest them. Sometimes, if you leave them in the ground long enough and they start getting a little too cold, the leaves will turn yellow though. The longer you leave them in the ground once they are a nice, usable size and the weather is beginning to cool off, the more likely it is that their vitamin levels will begin to drop----so don't leave them in the ground for too long.

    Dig them, clip off the foliage, let them dry in the sun for a few hours (especially if the soil was wet when they were dug) and then cure them in a warm, dry, humid location. They do best if cured at hot (85-90 degrees) temperatures and high (80-85%) humidity, but also will cure fairly well at somewhat lower temperatures. Sometimes I cure mine in the greenhouse, though I do have to open the doors and vents during the day so it doesn't hit 115 or 125 degrees or worse in there on sunny autumn days. I don't wash them before curing them. I just wipe off the dirt with my hands. They will cure better if the ground isn't really wet when you dig them. I usually cure them for a week or two before moving them to their permanent storage location.

    For permanent storage, I've found they keep pretty well anywhere I put them indoors, or even out in the tornado cellar for at least the warm parts of fall. How well they will keep in your tornado cellar in winter depends on how cold it gets. I usually keep mine in the spare bedroom. You can store them in boxes that you slide under the bed, or in plastic crates or bins in the closet, for example. They store the longest if kept at moderate temperatures of about 55-65 degrees and with moderate humidity. You want to eat any damaged ones that have cuts from the shovel first because they might go bad. However, often those cuts do heal up nicely during the curing process.

    You can eat them as soon as you dig them, but might find the flavor is not as good as expected. That's because they are starchy when dug, but as they cure, some of the starches convert to sugar....so they'll taste even sweeter after being cured. It always is best to dig them, cure them and get them moved into their storage location before the nights start dropping into the 40s. If, by chance, something comes up and you don't get them dug before the first frost or freeze, dig them as quickly thereafter as you can to ensure they aren't damaged----which can result from exposure to freezing temperatures.

    Hope this helps!

  • slowpoke_gardener
    9 years ago

    I have been waiting for a good chance to dig a few of my sweet potatoes just to see how they are doing. I am expecting a poor harvest this year. I think I have had more rain than the sweet potatoes needed for peak production. I also thank I have my soil amended too heavily. I am expecting long skinny roots with grub damage. Another problem that I have is because I live in a low area and have cooler nights in early fall. Add that to the fact that I don't have a good place to cure and store my potatoes forces me to dig a little earlier than many people do. If I can dig around the first of Oct. I can stand a better chance to get a good cure, which also gives me better storage. If I were storing the vines I would have a bumper crop.

    If my soil will ever dry out I will dig a few just to see if my expectations are correct.

  • Macmex
    9 years ago

    Last year I stored some on our sun porch, which sometimes hovers just above freezing. I stored some in an indoor room, which stays about 60 F. The difference between the roots was marked. The ones on the sun porch had more rot and were much harder to sprout come spring. The ones indoors, at room temperature, looked fresh and were good eating at least until April or May.

    George

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    George, Our sun porch is glassed in and well-insulated now, and I don't think it works as well for food storage now as it did back when it was just a screened-in porch. With 9 windows on 3 walls (the 4th wall is the back wall of the house) on the SW corner of the house, the sun porch can be roasting hot on a sunny winter day. It is a good place for curing things though, and you can control its temperature and air flow pretty well by opening or closing windows. It remains a great place to overwinter some plants in pots that are marginally cold-hardy, although we also have the greenhouse for that use as well.

    I've had some sweet potato varieties last 18 months in storage in the spare bedroom, but usually only the ones that have a naturally drier flesh anyway.

    Larry, I imagine you'll get about what you're expecting. It can be hard to get sweet potatoes that cure well in a really wet year....not that I have a lot of experience with really wet years. I think my wet year experience all was gained in 2004, 2007 and 2010. That's not a lot of wet year experience considering I've been gardening since I was a child. Well, we had a wet year or two in Texas in the 1990s but I wasn't growing sweet potatoes then because our yard was too shady.

    Dawn

  • greenveggielover
    9 years ago

    Just to add another person's experience, I dug the first of my 4 beds of sweet potatoes last Wednesday, and got quite a lot of big sweet potatoes. They're now curing on my front porch. I think I would have gotten even more if I could have waited another couple of weeks, but this is my first year to grow them and I couldn't help myself....had to peek. I'm going to try to force myself to wait until the end of the month to harvest the rest of them. But I did get a few big monsters --- I think this one is a Beauregard.
    Flis

  • oldokie
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    great sweet potatoes how did you grow them. what kind of bed did you use did you fertilize them and water or rely on rain

  • sorie6 zone 6b
    9 years ago

    Wow not that's a sweet potato!!!
    I planted some just for fun and didn't think I'd get any. Guess I'd better check!
    Thanks everyone for the info.

  • greenveggielover
    9 years ago

    Oldokie: Thanks, but I think my big sweet potato is a good example of Beginner's Luck!
    They were planted in a 4' x 12' raised bed, but spread way over that into the neighboring beds. My soil is already pretty fertile (lots of organic matter) so I didn't fertilize once I'd planted, but I did keep the vines well watered.
    I just hope it tastes as good as it looks!

  • Auther
    9 years ago

    Greenveggielover, That is a powerful big sweet potato, after it cures a while it should be even better with a little butter melted on it and baked in the oven until it gets done. Or made into a Sweet Potato Pie with just a hint of cloves and cinnamon sprinkled over it.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    Flis,

    That is a beautiful and huge sweet potato. As soon as I saw the size of it, I knew you'd surely been watering your garden well because there's no way you or I (or anyone else here in this county) has had enough rainfall this year to produce taters as big as yours without irrigation.

    You're going to enjoy the fruits of your labor (the taters of your labor just doesn't sound right) for many months to come!

    Dawn

  • chickencoupe
    9 years ago

    That's wonderful, flis!

  • slowpoke_gardener
    9 years ago

    flis, that is a beautiful sweet potato. I love sweet potatoes many different ways, but I think the best is raw.

  • AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
    9 years ago

    I love sweet potatoes. My new favorite way to eat them is peeled, cubed, drizzled with oil or butter, seasoning of choice. Roast on a cookie sheet. You all may have known this, but it is new to me. Takes less time than baking a whole potato.

  • mulberryknob
    9 years ago

    We used to raise sweet potatoes that looked like that. And I think that we might have been able to this year with very little irrigation because this has been the rainiest summer in years. The longest we went without rain was a little over 2 weeks and we had 2 inch rains at both ends of that gap.

    But this year....darn deer....there won't be much under our vines because despite sprinkling blood meal, human hair, dog hair, more blood meal, spraying with rotten egg repellent, more hair, more repellent and more repellent....the deer just KEPT eating the tops back. (darn deer) I only got one picking of southern peas--George's lovely Kentucky Reds--and two pickings of okra--George's Heavy Hitter--before those plants gave up and died under the repeated onslaught. So up goes the fence over the winter and hope for better luck next year.

    Which reminds me Dawn, we know how to build the fence because the strawberry growers here do it, but what did you do about the gates? Our gates are only 3 ft tall. Do we need to extend the gates as well? The drivethrough gate we will I think but what about the 3 ft wide gate? How did you handle that? Do you think they will jump through the gap over those gates?

  • slowpoke_gardener
    9 years ago

    I decided to dig the sweet potatoes in my sweet potato bed, and as expected the harvest was poor. I also noticed that the same vines that produced poorly in the bed produced better where they grew out over lawn in the un-amended soil.

    The vines looked very well other than insect damage. The electric wire did a fine job keeping the deer out but not the grasshoppers.

    The blade on tractor damaged a lot of potatoes but I am just not able to dig any more. I still have the sweet potatoes that my grand daughter planted in the garden, but I want her to be able to dig and keep those if she wants them. It will also give me a chance to teach her how to use the tractor.

  • chickencoupe
    9 years ago

    Larry, that's interesting. I have 3 plots of sweet potatoes. I've never grown them before. 2 are in amended beds in ground. Another, I placed in a 6" planter for ornamental purposes and it didn't get watered for a very long time once my leafy greens were gone. The one in the planter has potatoes. ????

  • slowpoke_gardener
    9 years ago

    Bon, amending soil is great, but I go overboard on it. My soil has a high mineral count without amending, but compost improves the texture.

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