Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

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JRinPA
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Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#1

Post: # 31793Unread post JRinPA
Sun Oct 04, 2020 9:45 am

This is my second year with sweet potatoes. Last year I planted them at the comm garden and let them go too long, they were died back completely and some rotted. Got busy and forgotten, but some were good to eat, some were eaten by critters, and some got huge and split/rotted. That was...early or mid-November.

I don't want that to happen this year. What are the keys/signs everyone uses to decide when to pick for best storage?

In the 20ft raised bed I planted through black mulch with big slots cut through, and had drip tape during they dry summer. The garden has no plastic and got water, later. Both plots went in early June or so when slips were available. I spaced them out in the already planted beds that had lettuce spinach radishes turnips carrots parsnips red beats. The sweet potatoes didn't really take off growing until later in July. We had a very slight frost a couple weeks back. I have been trying to keep the vines unrooted and cut to 6 ft or less (thanks [mention]GoDawgs[/mention] )

Here is what they look like morning of 10/4/20. I haven't dug any up yet, so looking for advice. Thanks.
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eyegrotom
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#2

Post: # 31797Unread post eyegrotom
Sun Oct 04, 2020 11:39 am

Since this is my first year growing sweet potatoes I can't give you much advice on when to harvest. I harvested some of mine early just out of curiosity and they did pretty good average 3 lb per slip still have a lot more growing and I'm going to do a little at a time.

Based on the pictures I see of yours you should have a pretty good yield hopefully somebody with experience will chime in and help you out

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PhilaGardener
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#3

Post: # 31827Unread post PhilaGardener
Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:08 pm

Those look good! I'm getting ready to dig mine. The deer just got in through my fencing and rimmed back a lot of the leaves for me. I like to put the roots in a box (dark) that sits in the back of my parked car in the sun for a few weeks before the season turns too cold. The warm, humid conditions in the sunny car are just right for that!

Good luck! In some years I have a great yield and in others almost nothing. Still working on understanding that!
Gardening near Philadelphia (USA)

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worth1
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#4

Post: # 31834Unread post worth1
Sun Oct 04, 2020 8:25 pm

Let the vines die back unless you have a pet cow or goat to give a sweet potato vine treat to.
It really doesn't matter.
The things need to cure anyway in the ground or not for a month or two.
This makes them more sweet.
And yes I am considering where you live.
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brownrexx
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#5

Post: # 31835Unread post brownrexx
Sun Oct 04, 2020 8:35 pm

This is also my second year with Beauregard sweet potatoes and last year I allowed them to remain in the ground until just before frost because I was waiting for the vines to die back. I got huge potatoes with ugly furrows in them. They were way too big for my liking although they did taste OK.

Image20190928_135355 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

ImageGiant Sweet Potato 2019 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

I made a sweet potato pie out of the one pictured above and still had enough left to make sweet potato casserole.


ImageSweet Potato Pie with Jelly Pie by Brownrexx, on Flickr

This year I harvested at 100 days even though the vines were still green and growing and I am much happier with the harvest. Each little pile is from one plant and the darker ones in the last picture were grown in a straw bale just for fun.

ImageSweet Potatoes 2020 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

ImageSweet Potatoes 2020 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

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JRinPA
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#6

Post: # 31839Unread post JRinPA
Sun Oct 04, 2020 10:00 pm

@eyegrotom, hey there, thanks, they do look good on top. I figure they grew well, my biggest worry is voles. Someone showed me some vole repellent, might have been the "vole scram" I just looked up, but of course I didn't actually buy any. Way back in July as I picked or thinned out the other stuff I had broadcast (seed I listed above, lettuce red beets etc) I found a "trail" about an inch wide and a half inch deep through the dirt. Maybe 2 wide and 1 inch deep. Something was making its way through there under all the jungle that was there. Now the sweet potatoes are their own jungle and I have no idea if it is crisscrossed with trails under there. There is a 1/2" hardware cloth fence around it, but not buried, just to keep out rabbits and groundhogs and springer spaniels.

[mention]PhilaGardener[/mention] car idea is good, I was told attic as well. I guess it would depend on the house.

@brownrexx, the bottom redder ones in hay were the same variety? That's interesting. Quite a copper tone to them.
100 days...all of mine were planted within few days and it had to be late May or early June. I didn't think it was hot enough yet, but some slips looked rough and I wanted to get them in the ground. The left row in the garden were overshadowed severely by turnips. But as far as I can tell only one plant was lost. 100 days from June 1 would have been Sept 10 or so. So I'm at 125 days, but again, it seemed like they idled in place for a long time.

Another difference from last year, my garden soil is pretty loamy and the raised beds are loose. Last year at the comm garden, it was just broadforked clay soil with some compost on top. Much different weather too. Digging them was very wet and sticky last year. I think they would have been great if had I picked in early October. I had a lot like your 2019 pic but figure another 3 weeks of decay past that for the ones with the X splits. And some that were just husk, eaten by voles or rotted.

@worth1 probably the fat springer girl would eat them. Maybe both. Close as I have. They graze at the cherry tomatoes and love tearing up peavine for a few peas.

Maybe I'll have to pick a few this week. It was something like 3 dozen slip all together, from two sources. There are plenty out there if it turns out I was too early. I know they should be cured, but it might be safer out of the ground.

I really couldn't tell last year how much damage was weather/cold and how much vole damage. We did have freezes before I got to around to them. I was shocked how many and how big they were, those Georgia Jet, but it was probably half or more right to the compost. And none made it through for slips this year. They molded over, and I've since learned the basement gets too cold for sweet potato storage. This year was Centennial and I guess two others that don't recall, but I'm going to try for slips next spring.

[mention]eyegrotom[/mention]
[mention]brownrexx[/mention]

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brownrexx
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#7

Post: # 31850Unread post brownrexx
Mon Oct 05, 2020 7:19 am

[mention]JRinPA[/mention] I wonder if the ones from the straw bale had more moisture in the skins from the wet straw and that made them look more red because they all look the same now in storage.

I also planted my slips in looser soil this year compared to last year and I think that this led to nicer shaped potatoes. I think that when the potatoes grew down to the clay layer last year that they kept enlarging sideways. Possibly if I had harvested sooner, they would have been smaller and not so ugly.

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GoDawgs
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#8

Post: # 31921Unread post GoDawgs
Tue Oct 06, 2020 6:44 am

[mention]JRinPA[/mention] , have you looked under the vines to see if any sweets are starting to push out of the ground? They don't always do that but it's one sign they're probably ready. You can also fork up one hill to see what's going on. I give mine about 120 days from planting and found it's easiest to remove all the vines before digging.

[mention]brownrexx[/mention] , those are some pretty sweets! I think I remember seeing some photos online of those pitted ones you had last year but can't remember what caused that. It looks like you hit the "sweet" spot when you dug this year. :D

[mention]PhilaGardener[/mention] , I've been curing mine in my car also after reading an article on that two years ago. The gal whose article I read puts hers single layer in peach baskets, puts them in big plastic trash bags with holes punched in there for ventilation and then puts them in her car to get those 80-90 degrees needed for curing. The bags keep the humidity level up as the heat drives off moisture from the sweets. Down here where we get some really hot late summer weather, I've started keeping one of those remote thermometers in the car and then lowering the windows just enough to keep the temp in the perfect range. It worked like a charm.

Mine are stored in peach baskets with a layer of newspaper laying on top of them. They're in a closet in the house and hold just fine there until spring.

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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#9

Post: # 31922Unread post GoDawgs
Tue Oct 06, 2020 6:51 am

There's a really great article from Sand Hill Preservation Center on growing sweet potatoes. In that article they talk about their method for determining readiness by figuring daily heat units as they like 1200 total heat units over the growing season to get the size potatoes they like. Of course, that is for their early varieties so later maturing potatoes would take more. But it's a starting point.

Excerpt from https://www.sandhillpreservation.com/sw ... nformation
"Fourth: This is the most important thing when it comes to sweet potatoes. It is the heat units that determines success, not the number of days nor plant zone, but heat units. I have been an avid weather observer for over 40 years and have files of weather data to go with files of planting data. A few years ago , thanks to the help of one of our workers, I was able to put the two sets of data together and arrive at some conclusions that I had already suspected, but had never had the time to confirm. It takes about 1200 heat units for our early varieties to reach a decent crop of usable size roots. I use the term usable size as I think for many a sweet potato the size of a nice fat bratwurst is about the best size for keeping and for baking. Bigger than that is okay, but they do not sprout as well nor keep as well because they suffer from bruising much easier. The question you must then ask yourself is: “How is 1200 heat units determined?” I offer the following examples. To get heat units you take the day’s high temperature (maximum) and the day’s low temperature (minimum) and add them together. Then divide by 2 and subtract 55 from that. That gives you the heat units.

Example 1. Daytime high (maximum) 75 deg. F, night time low (minimum) 45 deg. F. Add those together and divide by 2 you get 120/2 or 60. Subtract 55 and you get 5 heat units. If that is your typical summer, then you will need 240 frost free days to get a crop. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that if you have summertime days like that, you are probably not going to have 240 frost free days because that is 8 months.


Just for fun I set up a spreadsheet to do all the calculating as I have access to daily min and max temps for this area from a nearby UGA weather station. Good grief! Our heat units here are out the roof long before the sweets size up! But I imagine this method would work better farther north.

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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#10

Post: # 31926Unread post brownrexx
Tue Oct 06, 2020 7:12 am

GoDawgs wrote: Tue Oct 06, 2020 6:44 am it's easiest to remove all the vines before digging.

That's how I dug mine and yes, the were pushing up out of the ground too so I guess that I got it right this year.

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JRinPA
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#11

Post: # 32253Unread post JRinPA
Mon Oct 12, 2020 1:02 pm

Wish I would have dug some up yesterday. Was canning meat most of the day. And picked up my pumpkins. Kind of feels like last year, Sept to Dec is busy. But at least they are staring at me through the kitchen window so they won't be totally forgotten. I personally could go for a whole lifetime of Autumn. The rest of the year, for me, is just waiting for it, or regretting it is past. Even this rain has a nice little chill to it.

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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#12

Post: # 33380Unread post JRinPA
Sun Nov 01, 2020 6:27 pm

Well they did not get dug until Friday Oct 30th. The ones in the raised bed were decent. Three or four around 2 lb but nicely shaped, most 1/2 lb or less. I'd say average 3 per plant when they had any, but some plants had none. They had not died back yet, not much, but we've been wet and kinda cold for a while. That soil drains well but it was so wet that they all had a kind of loamy fur to them. I already ran a lot of plants through there, all sown seed types, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, radishes, and parsnips. The sweet potatoes were just the anchormen.

The ones in the garden, planted in slightly raised rows, were raided by voles I guess. Lots of empty sweet potato and red beet husks there. Half the leaves were frost killed to black a week or so back. We only harvested one row of the two in the garden. There were a number of failing or fissured ones in the row we dug up, and it was sort of depressing. One big grenade is 4 lb, but has splits. Another similar from the same plant. That was the only real strong plant it seemed. In general the garden will be much wetter than the raised bed, but this year was very dry until the last month or two. I actually put drip tape in there for late July. I was worried about voles there, and I should have harvested earlier. But honestly I rotated a lot of stuff through that patch this year so it is hard to call this a loss. Had peas, okra, red beets, lettuce, spinach, turnips, radishes in there, and still has parsnips that were dug around, and now daikon too.

The garden is mostly deeply forked compost improved clay, with some perlite mixed in this year. Whereas the 20ft raised bed built in spring 2016 were originally 6-8" of aged horse manure, peat moss, compost, and perlite. I need to keep on building the garden rows higher. Each year has been a little more defined rows, but I really crowded things in this year and put skinny boards down to walk in. Changing a 2 ft row into 3 ft with a board walkway, and such. I didn't fall a single time, but there were some close calls. Next year I'm back to standard width raised rows, I think, and build them higher. (edited for clarity)

With the one garden row left to go, the yield so far between the 20 ft bed and the one garden row was 26lb of nice ones for storage, 29lb of use first ones with fissures or fork breaks, and a few lbs were brought in that don't make the cut. I put the nice ones high in the bathroom closet for storage.

Those two trays are 27 lb of the use first that are staying in the kitchen. I probably could have put about 5lb more of these away for storage. I used one big one, around 2lb, for sweet potato pudding a few hours ago. Very good, that.
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I'm considering getting a lot of sand to mix in to some beds and designate them just to grow more root crops. But I'm not sure which bed it should be, or even whether it should be at the house or the comm garden. The comm garden gets more sun but is harder to water.
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JRinPA
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#13

Post: # 33381Unread post JRinPA
Sun Nov 01, 2020 6:41 pm

Here are the ones in the closet, 26 lb that should keep a while. I have to say almost 100% of them are from the raised bed.
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#14

Post: # 33396Unread post brownrexx
Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:31 am

They look good [mention]JRinPA[/mention] I like the sizes.

Last night I cooked a pork tenderloin in the oven with roasted unpeeled, white and sweet potatoes. I discovered that peeling sweet potatoes is not necessary and they are good. Note the small sweet potato pieces in the picture. All I did was wash the small, skinny sweets, cut them and add olive oil before roasting.

ImagePork tenderloin and roasted veggies by Brownrexx, on Flickr

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Growing Coastal
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#15

Post: # 33398Unread post Growing Coastal
Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:27 am

I love sweet potatoes but don't live in a good growing area for them nor for curing them and envy you all for being able to grow them well.
Last spring I noticed one had started sprouting in the cupboard and grew it on for the foliage. When I dumped out the pot in Sept I was amazed to see these were packed in there, in the 2.5 gal pot. Maybe the potted plant reached temps that were hotter in the cool days we had here last summer? I may try this again in a larger pot next year.
The largest one is not quite baseball size.

The leaves are supposed to be edible. Does anyone here ever eat them and if so how do they taste?

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brownrexx
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#16

Post: # 33426Unread post brownrexx
Mon Nov 02, 2020 5:25 pm

Some of my small ones were from pots just like that. I had a couple of extra slips and hubby planted them in pots because he thought that the foliage would be pretty. We have eaten a couple of meals from those potted sweet potatoes.

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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#17

Post: # 33439Unread post worth1
Mon Nov 02, 2020 7:54 pm

Growing Coastal wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:27 am I love sweet potatoes but don't live in a good growing area for them nor for curing them and envy you all for being able to grow them well.
Last spring I noticed one had started sprouting in the cupboard and grew it on for the foliage. When I dumped out the pot in Sept I was amazed to see these were packed in there, in the 2.5 gal pot. Maybe the potted plant reached temps that were hotter in the cool days we had here last summer? I may try this again in a larger pot next year.
The largest one is not quite baseball size.

The leaves are supposed to be edible. Does anyone here ever eat them and if so how do they taste?

Image
No worries I have yet to find a hard neck garlic I can grow.
We live where we live and grow what we can grow.
Yes I eat the leaves and vines raw out of hand and in salads when I grow them and can beat the deer to them.
Deer and all other manner of critters love sweet potato vines and leaves.
I cant explain the taste but it ain't like chicken.
They start to flower in the fall of the year here.
Fond memories of my growing up is of our cattle hanging out at the garden fence waiting for us to toss the vines over for them to eat.
Worth
25 miles southeast of Waterloo Texas.

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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#18

Post: # 33441Unread post Growing Coastal
Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:39 pm

brownrexx wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2020 5:25 pm Some of my small ones were from pots just like that. I had a couple of extra slips and hubby planted them in pots because he thought that the foliage would be pretty. We have eaten a couple of meals from those potted sweet potatoes.
How many slips would you suggest be planted in what size pot?
I'd like to try growing them again.

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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#19

Post: # 33473Unread post stone
Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:48 am

worth1 wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2020 7:54 pm
Growing Coastal wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:27 am The leaves are supposed to be edible. Does anyone here ever eat them and if so how do they taste?
Yes I eat the leaves and vines raw out of hand and in salads when I grow them and can beat the deer to them.
I pick the leaves, and after rinsing, I slice the leaves and add to stew.

The first time I tried them, I didn't cut them up, just left them whole... I found them similar to eating evening primrose... kinda fuzzy textured... Slicing them first makes them better.

I don't think I want to eat them raw .... eating raw sweet potatoes... seems bad enough.

Over the weekend, I sacrificed a rooster, and after cooking it in the pressure cooker, added in some fresh pulled carrots and sweet potatoes, and sweet potato leaves, cubed squash and rice... yummy, yummy.

Really need a picture, I slice the leaves by the piled handful, not a leaf at a time... that would be tedious.

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brownrexx
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Re: Sweet Potatoes - ready to harvest?

#20

Post: # 33476Unread post brownrexx
Tue Nov 03, 2020 10:01 am

Growing Coastal wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:39 pm How many slips would you suggest be planted in what size pot?
I'd like to try growing them again.
I would only plant one slip per pot and use the largest pot you have. The bigger the pot the more room your potatoes will have.

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