The other day I spent quite a bit of time digging up my sweet potatoes. My bright idea was to use my new, long Vegega garden bed to grow them. I had just filled it with lots of stuff, along with dirt, and it really wasn’t good for growing much. So, I figured why not use it for sweet potatoes?
That was not a bad idea, because I don’t really have ground space for them. But when it came time to dig them, I had to kneel and dig by hand. A pitchfork is generally used to dig potatoes, but in the bed I couldn’t do that. It was a job.
I planted the potatoes back in February. They’ve been growing for 6 months.
I’m hoping that I got all of them and it’s a nice little haul. Plenty of sweet potatoes for me. Now they have to dry in a humid location – no problem there – for about 10 days. This toughens the skin for storage, and sweetens the potatoes.
The other problem with sweet potatoes is that they last forever. I mean the ones left behind in the dirt. Even roots will continue to grow and I bet I will see sweet potato vines in this bed for years to come!
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Thank you for sharing!
Hydrangeas Blue 
Good haul of sweet potatoes Pam! I stored mine in straw but you can also wrap them in newspaper (individually!) and store in a box in a dark dry place. You need to check them regularly.
You don’t need humidity for their drying – in fact I would be careful with that. We call our sweet potatoes, Kumara, and they have purple skins and yellow flesh. We also have others that look more like what you have grown. The texture is different.
How you harvested them was perfect – if you use a fork, you will end up stabbing a tuber (or more) and then they are no good to store.
I grew mine in a high raised bed and dug them out with a trowel and my gloved hands! And thought I had got them all but found quite a big one when I planted the leeks!
I throw away my potato peelings as I don’t want potatoes growing in my garden from the kitchen compost, but I put the kumara peelings into the compost and it doesn’t matter if they grow. And that is one way to get new sweet potato ‘seedlings’ – cut a chunk of sweet potato that has an ‘eye’ and put it in a saucer of water and see if it sprouts, and then plant that in the garden when the weather is good (probably not a problem for you) and let them grow!
Also it is good to cut back the sweet potato vines (maybe 2-3 feet) so then they put the energy into the tubers and not the vines! I did that in the beginning but then gave up as I had so many.
🙂
Justine
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Hi Justine, so I’m not alone in hand-digging sweet potatoes! Nice to hear. And, I did not know the secret about cutting back the vines! Wish I had because my vines went nuts. I have had the sprouts grow from my potatoes – I really never have a shortage. I have ONLY humid conditions here, so that is what they get, but there is a fan on overhead. I have no space in the house to dry them. I may try the newspaper for storage tho – but no really dry place. Thanks so much for the tips! 😎
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