[Homestead] Sweet Potato harvest

Clansgian at wmconnect.com Clansgian at wmconnect.com
Tue Nov 11 20:01:38 EST 2008



> >The variety was Vardaman, 
> which was recommended. 

Vardaman are pretty bland no matter what.  I think they get recommended 
because they will grow a big tuber reliably.  But they have got to be the worst 
tasting sweet potato ever.

Story goes that a gardening expert said he knew sweet potatoes so well he 
could tell what variety they were just by tasting them blidfolded.  His gardening 
buddies gathered around with every imaginable variety of sweet potato and one 
by one gave them to him as he sat blindfolded and he'd cut off a piece, sniff 
it, taste it and pronounce:  "This one's a Georgia Jet, this one's Spanish 
Yellow, etc."  The gardeners saw that they'd been had, that he really could 
identify them by taste alone.  So one of them looked about, found a big piece of 
cork and quickly took out his pocket knife and carved it into the shape of a 
sweet potato.  They handed it to the blindfolded sweet potato expert who cut off 
a piece, tasted it.  Looked puzzled.  Cut off another piece and tasted it, 
and said:

"Well, I'm not quite sure.  My best guess would be that it's a Vardaman, but 
if it is, it's the best one I've ever tasted."

----------------------------

Really good tasting sweet potatoes need the very richest, best composted 
ground you have.  We have a lot of in situ compost beds in the garden and the year 
they go from being compost beds back to being garden beds, we use them for 
sweet potatoes.

In this clime sweet potatoes are iffy at best.  We've grown them in hot 
compost with good results.

Regular potatoes will not do well in anything but acidic ground, quite acidic 
in fact.  If you have alkaline soil, you will have to artificially acidify a 
plot of it for potatoes.  Composted vegatable material or manured chips or 
sawdust are naturally acidic, acidic enough for potatoes.  Just don't add 
anything that could neuralize the acidity, like lime.  Potatoes need calcium, but you 
can add that as calcium chloride (road salt, but be careful that it doesn't 
any sodium chloride in it!) without messing up the pH.

You probaby can't get road salt where you are, can you??


James



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