Market Farming

[road's end farm <organic101 AT linkny.com>]

On Jan 23, 2006, at 12:48 PM, david purpura wrote:

> Hi All.  Is anyone successfully growing sweet potatoes in Mass. area?  I don't find any information in the usual places - fedco and johnnys, or ronnigers.  Where do you get seed, how to grow, harvest, season, etc...
>  

Well not in Mass. but in NY, I think the advice would be similar.

You don't start from seed, you use slips. You can probably grow your own slips most years, but will need some to start and once in a while to renew your stock if you get disease in it and production goes down. You have to get slips of relatively short-season varieties to get a crop in the North. Georgia Jet is good, so are some others. The only source I know for certified organic slips is Mapple Farms in, believe it or not, Canada; but some other sources have conventionally-grown slips. Territorial, Pinetree, and Nichols Garden Nursery carry them; so does the Jung/Shumway company family. (Jung and Shumway seem to now be owned by the same people, who also own HPS, Totally Tomatoes, and Vermont Bean and I don't know who else; they are secretive about the ownership and refused to tell me who they are.) 

I plant slips one foot apart in black plastic mulch 4 feet wide. If you're not going to cover them they shouldn't go out till June, and June with a warm weather report. Put the mulch down a few days ahead of time to warm the soil. You can plant even slips with little or no root, they'll probably root anyway (though well rooted ones are better). Don't worry if they look half dead at or right after planting, or if some of the above ground portion dies if the weather turns hot; they'll probably grow just fine. Last year I put mine out in late May covered with row cover (the spunbonded type) over hoops; I don't know whether the hoops were necessary but I was using them anyway in that field for peppers and eggplant. Row cover was removed in mid June. I water at planting, and if the weather is really dry until they're well established; but they're amazingly resistant to both drought and too much rain. They don't do well in a year that's all clouds, though; they do like sun.

The vines will grow all over the place, give them room (at least 6' on center, and more is better; 10' is not too much). I usually weed the plastic edges once and cultivate between rows just before they run off the plastic; after that they'll crowd the weeds out. Deer do love to graze the leaves; the best control I've found for this after the row cover comes off is a little blood meal sprinkled over the leaves; deer don't like the taste. This wouldn't be a good idea if you were selling leaf tips, I don't think humans would like it much either. You have to renew the blood meal after each significant rain; but you don't need to use much of it.

Here I try digging a few starting early September and see how they're doing. If they're still too small, wait a while. They'll keep getting bigger until frost, which will kill the leaves; you don't have to finish getting them in the middle of your frost-is-coming-panic harvest, but dig all of them fairly soon after this, they don't like to sit in cold ground. If tops are still alive I just remove them at harvest; tops don't need to be mowed or otherwise killed before main harvest as is done with regular potatoes. They store very well, but don't chill them: cure them like winter squash instead: put them somewhere warm for a few days (such as greenhouse or near the wood stove), then store them at 50º or above, too warm is better than too cold.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale