Fusarium Wilt

[AlittleSalt]

It could be spider mites. I didn't pay much attention to the plants. Most of my attention is being used on the container garden.

Sweet Potatoes...I love the way the leaves look. The deer here love how they taste, but with Max (Our huge German Shepherd male dog) we don't see deer much anymore.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

It could be spider mites. I didn't pay much attention to the plants. Most of my attention is being used on the container garden.

Sweet Potatoes...I love the way the leaves look. The deer here love how they taste, but with Max (Our huge German Shepherd male dog) we don't see deer much anymore.

You should eat them.

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by b54red

I grow sweet potatoes in the same bed as my bell peppers and they do wonderfully and they seem to help the peppers stay healthy longer. It seems the two have a symbiotic relationship that I found out purely by accident a few years ago. I planted my bells in the same bed that had sweet potatoes the year before and a few sprang up so I just let them run. Of course I had to clip some of the vines to stop them from covering my bells; but the surprising thing was that the sweet potatoes made far more with the bells than they did the year before by themselves and my bell peppers seemed to prosper along with them. I have been setting out a few slips between the rows of bell peppers since then and have never had such productive sweet potatoes.

Bill

Thanks Bill. I have to try that.

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Worth1

You should eat them.

I read the leaves are edible.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by ginger2778

I read the leaves are edible.

I ate a ton of them last year and I'm not dead yet.
Even substituted them for lettuce on a BLT and other sandwiches.

Worth

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Worth1

I ate a ton of them last year and I'm not dead yet.
Even substituted them for lettuce on a BLT and other sandwiches.

Worth

Taste?l
Like lettuce or spinach? Strong? Mild?

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by ginger2778

Taste?l
Like lettuce or spinach? Strong? Mild?

Cant remember having much taste at all but they are high in vitamins and niacin.
I have no doubt the Indians of the Yucatan ate then with their tacos or at least I would like to think they did.

[GoDawgs]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

I may have woke up the wrong thread. It looks like RKN. There was no way to know until I pulled them up to see.

Those roots don't look very nematody but something sure as heck is going on with the stems by the look of the ones cut open. Thankfully, I've never had anything like that happen so I'll be interested in seeing if anyone else can identify that.

[GoDawgs]

Originally Posted by ginger2778

Taste?l
Like lettuce or spinach? Strong? Mild?

After reading about cooking them I did try some last year. Seems like in the catalog world most greens "taste like spinach".

Sweet potato leaves are mild but I can't describe their flavor other than "not much." How about "green". The stems will exude a little bit of a white milky substance when picked but it disappears when you cook them. I sauteed them with onion and garlic, kind of like I do with kale and they weren't bad. As Worth said, chock full of nutrients.

[AlittleSalt]

I will be growing some sweet potatoes, but not in those raised beds. They are sitting on top of hard red clay. I have to eat a leaf too

[b54red]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

I will be growing some sweet potatoes, but not in those raised beds. They are sitting on top of hard red clay. I have to eat a leaf too

My raised beds sit on hard red clay. The beds are 8 inches deep and that seemed plenty deep for the sweet potatoes. As a matter of fact some of the runners went out quite a ways and I had sweet potatoes growing in pure clay. One of them was about 7 inches long. I didn't even know they could penetrate that stuff but they did. Of course there weren't many like that but there were a fair number of smaller sweet potatoes growing outside the beds. This is the same bed that was dedicated to only sweet potatoes three years ago and they didn't make many potatoes but the same bed the next year with only a few volunteers growing under my pepper plants did fantastic. I made about four times as many potatoes. I know it can't just be the year because the two years since when I let the sweet potato vines run under the peppers they also made really good and I have never had much luck with sweet potatoes in the past. I have already set out some slips under my first bed of bells and will be setting more out under my second bed which I hope to plant the first of next week.

Bill

Bill

[AlittleSalt]

I grew my own sweet potato slips one year. It was fun. I used grocery store sweet potatoes that were probably hybrids. I prepared the sandy loam deep and made it as friable as possible. Planted the slips and they grew fast and furious. The area was just outside the garden. One day a deer mowed them down. I caught her eating the leaves. So I put up a makeshift fence that worked, and new leaves grew back pretty quick. At harvest time, the sweet potatoes were around 2 inches thick and a foot or so long. I couldn't help but laugh.

Bill, I can see growing sweet potatoes in one of the raised beds with ornamental looking pepper plants. Tabasco would look good (My avatar/picture). Thank you for the information.