Sweet potatoes

sam2me

Hi
I grew sweet potatoes for the first time this year, with reasonable succes.I used a supermarket one to grow the slips, and ate the supermarket one after producing the slips, it was lovely and refreshed.
They require a long growing season, 6 months plus, and like a poor soil,I re used old potting compost. I dug them up in November and got about 2kg of potatoes. There were only 2 tubers that were of shop size, the rest were smaller down to finger sized, but tasted lovely and got roasted in their skins (to small to peel). As said before, they like it hot and moist with plenty of water. They dont get blight either

Sam2me

lora

Thanks so much for all the useful replies. I am definitely going to try these.:j

Megansmum

sorry if this is a daft question but - do you grow these in exactly the same way you would normal potatoes?

conradmum

No, you don't grow them from the tubers. You grow them from the shoots that grow from the tubers, so you either have to buy the shoots (expensive) or try to get a shop-bought sweet potato to shoot for you. Then you break off the shoots, pot them up and grow them on until it's warm enough to plant them out.

You plant them the same as any pot-grown plant and don't earth them up as you would normal potatoes. My advice is to train the stems up canes so they don't touch the ground and root elsewhere. They need a long growing season and lots of humid heat. When the stems die back in the autumn you can dig up the tubers.

Although they're called potatoes in fact they're an entirely different kind of plant.

Megansmum

conradmum wrote: »

My advice is to train the stems up canes so they don't touch the ground and root elsewhere. They need a long growing season and lots of humid heat. When the stems die back in the autumn you can dig up the tubers.

Although they're called potatoes in fact they're an entirely different kind of plant.

Ok, now i feel even stupider! So, if the stem grows and then dies back .... does the stem do nothing?? The sweet potatoes grow under the soil? How many on average do you get growing under the ground per stem?

conradmum

Megansmum wrote: »

Ok, now i feel even stupider! So, if the stem grows and then dies back .... does the stem do nothing?? The sweet potatoes grow under the soil? How many on average do you get growing under the ground per stem?

Yes, that's right. The stem is just like the stem of an ordinary plant. The tubers don't sprout from it if you earth it up (don't earth up sweet potatoes!). From memory you get four or five largish tubers per plant and maybe a few little ones too.

Vixie_Pixie

i think i will be definately PM-ing you when i start to do this!!

conradmum

Vixie_Pixie wrote: »

i think i will be definately PM-ing you when i start to do this!!

Feel free.

Vixie_Pixie

Thank you!

lisa26_2

I'd like to have a go at this....what do you need to do to get the shop bought potato to produce shoots? Could I grow them in a pot?