pages

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Sweet Tater Success Story

From the country...

Remember these lovers from Valentine's past?


As we head into yet another deep freeze around these parts my thoughts turn to happier (read: warmer) times. I have been meaning to share my sweet potato success story for a while now and as I am currently enjoying a spoonful of baked beans with roast sweet taters, I figure now is as good a time as any.

I plan projects all winter to keep my green thumb busy and to keep us eating some fresh greens. We grow a lot of pea shoots, micro greens and bucket sprouts to enhance our salads and sandwiches, which really seems to get us through the dark days of winter. I am also gearing up for the big onion seeding of 2013, which will go on for a while as I seed tray upon tray of onions seeds for planting out in early spring. I tried my hand at growing sweet potato slips for the first time last year to plant out in the field- just for kicks really to see how and if it would turn out. We normally purchase sweet potato slips but I wanted to try to make them myself and it really wasn't that hard- you just need some patience.

I am happy to report that it was a great success!

The mother sweet potato in water

Sweet potatoes in the field

A beautiful sweet potato flower.
So there you have it sweet potatoes demystified! This can be adapted easily for smaller spaces, garden plots and I have even seen them planted into shopping bags. A quick Google search and you are off to the races! Make sure you find a local sweet potato though that has been acclimatized to your growing region. I prefer the medium size potatoes with lots of little eyes for the slips to sprout from.

Too fun!

2 comments:

  1. I grew them fro slips in the greenhouse this year but didn't get the crop I was hoping for- not sure if it was something I did/didn't do, or whether the one I sprouted was not a good choice for this area. Any suggestions on where to buy good local growers?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Callie,
    We have sweet potatoes for sale at the Brickwork's Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. Any (medium size with lots of eyes) sweet potato from a local farmers market would do (you want one grown in Ontario). You want to start them early- I would say March is a good time because there is a few little steps that need to be done before they are ready for the soil. There is lots of info on the internet which is where I took my first tutorial or you could follow the links in this post from my experiment last year. Good luck it is a really fun project!

    Laura

    ReplyDelete

Pin It "> Related Posts with Thumbnails Pin It