Lowdown on Sweet Potatoes.

[Worth1]

You can just snap the shoot off at the potato and plant it out in moist soil
It will collapse for a bit but keep it damp and it will grow roots.Don't worry if it looks like it is going to die it wont just keep it moist.

You shouldn't have a problem with that in Ireland.

Worth

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by Worth1

You can just snap the shoot off at the potato and plant it out in moist soil
It will collapse for a bit but keep it damp and it will grow roots.Don't worry if it looks like it is going to die it wont just keep it moist.

You shouldn't have a problem with that in Ireland.

Worth

Hahaha that's true!

[clkeiper]

Great info Worth. I actually sprouted a sweet potato from the grocery store. No idea what it is. I planted them up in the high tunnel where it is warm all day long. Hopefully it will be a good crop. I planted a castor bean right at the end to repel voles and moles before I even put the slips in. Never have I grown sweet potatoes.

[Worth1]

All of my sweet potato crop is from grocery store potatoes and stuff that survived the winter underground.
I broke the vines up and planted them.
Then as they grew I buried the vines, each place they take root will be more potatoes.
Worth

[Nematode]

Short season areas will get better tuberization if you discourage rooting along the vines.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Nematode

Short season areas will get better tuberization if you discourage rooting along the vines.

These vines have been growing for some time now.
Most people start sweet potato slips in the Austin area in May and at the very end of May is when I stopped rooting vines.
I really like vines of all kinds and have since I was a small child.
Now I am a big child and still like vines.
Mine haven't even come close to how much vine they will make before the end of summer.
Plus you can eat the leaves.
Worth

[clkeiper]

Originally Posted by Nematode

Short season areas will get better tuberization if you discourage rooting along the vines.

so, should I put a trellis above the vines to keep them off the ground? I have a nylon cuke trellis that I can re-appropriate for the sweet potatoes.

[Nematode]

You can trellis, but moving them occasionally so they don't root is ok too.

[Worth1]

As far as I know I have never seen a sweet potato climb on its own.
It has no tendrils and wont spiral like a bean vine.
It just moves along the ground up down and over stuff.

Worth

[clkeiper]

Originally Posted by Worth1

As far as I know I have never seen a sweet potato climb on its own.
It has no tendrils and wont spiral like a bean vine.
It just moves along the ground up down and over stuff.

Worth

like I said... I have never grown them, never even thought about whether they had tendrils or not.. duh.
Thanks Nematode. stupid question obviously.

[whistech]

Sweet potato vines will climb. I grew some a couple of years ago in a bed where I was also growing peppers and the sweet potato vines grew up the rebar I was using to stake my pepper plants.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by whistech

Sweet potato vines will climb. I grew some a couple of years ago in a bed where I was also growing peppers and the sweet potato vines grew up the rebar I was using to stake my pepper plants.

From reading some do better than others and some need help and so on.
The web is full of people asking this same question.

We had some growing next to a fence and they never climbed and that is the only input I have to offer.
Right now I am trying to train some to climb.

How did yours climb did they twist around the rebar like a bean?

Worth

[Durgan]

Sweet potatoes are related to morning glory, in the genus Ipomoea. Those vines go on forever. I found the vines never rooted and all the forming potatoes were in about a two foot diameter of the planted slip. Mind you growth is checked by frost in my relatively short season. I use last year's crop for new slips or if I find a particularly attractive supermarket potato, I grow slips from that.

This was my 2016 crop.

http://durgan.org/2016/September%202...0Harvest/HTML/ 15 September 2016 Sweet Potato Harvest
My ten sweet potato plants were harvested. This is my first attempt at growing sweet potatoes under reasonable conditions. Eight of the plants were from slips purchased from a site on the internet. Two purple ones were from slips from a supermarket grown by myself. The supermarket slips were longer growing hence accounts for their larger production. The total weight was 31.5 pounds from ten plants or an average of 3.15 pounds per plant. With good growing conditions extrapolating my results an expectation from each plant would be about 6 pounds in a home garden. All the new tubers were centered around the planted slip in a diameter of about 12 inches. The vegetation covered a very large area and was very healthy. It was removed before digging the tubers. Some of the tubers were disfigured by an insect or rodent. This was simply cut away. The tubers were placed in a hot greenhouse and will be allowed to cure or condition for about ten days, then stored in my root cellar. One tuber was baked and is shown with these pictures. It was most pleasant to eat.

[Worth1]

Okay here is the deal, I have slips from the same potato growing in three different places.
Some are up front and I have tried to get them to wind around some wire and they just pass it up like it isn't even there.
In another spot there is a wire hanging down from a fence I grew runner beans on last year.
This darn sweet potato vine took off towards that wire about 3 feet away like it could see it and with a skinny vine started winding up the thing in the same direction of wind as a pole bean with no help from me at all.
Worth

[Worth1]

Here it is going away from the sun not towards it.
Another oddity.
Worth
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