Has slowed the sweet potatoes this year. They have really kept trucking, despite deer croppping the vines a couple of time, continuous stage 2 drought all summer and voles have eaten quite a few. Taken a few hills out entirely but this is pretty illustrative of a full hill of Carvers.
Looking good Farmerdill. Are you harvesting them all right now? I've got some still doing well despite our drought but I thought I had to wait for frost to harvest them. Do the flowers on them mean they're building roots? I just today noticed some flowers but they may have been flowering for some time.
Jeff
This message was edited Sep 28, 2007 6:10 PM
I don't currently have any cultivars that flower. I could leave them for another month but the voles would more than eat any increase as dry as it is. Besides I am old and slow and can only dig 15 -20 hills per day, I probably will be well into October before the last of them come out. Frost here averages around Thanksgiving, but the short daylight stops them long before then. Last cultivar that I grew which flowered was Beauregard. Flowering does not seem to have any effect on growth.
It has been dry here much of the growing season with saving rains every so often. The sweetpotato crop is very good here. The first one I pulled was 4½ pounds. Course they are not all that size by any means. I have Nancy Hall yellow, Beauregard orange, Ivis white, and am supposed to have O'Henry yellow.
Jkehl, some varieties flower in the fall and others don't flower much, if at all. It's just a response to the days getting shorter.
FarmerD, what's your favorite sweet potato so far?
Copper Jewel
Thanks Agrinerd. I dug some of mine shortly after Farmerdill posted this and they were tiny still, like the size of a hotdog. So I'm just leaving them until frost kills the vines and then I'll dig out whatever I can get.
Jeff
My vines died back a couple days ago so I dug up all my root crops. A lot of mine were small or mishapen from lack of water, but I did get a few good ones. Here's the ones we had for supper tonight.
Jeff
I like that new yellow...O'Henry. It's very smooth textured.
I had a better yeld than I thought I would. Did not beat last years big one though This year 6lb. 4oz. was my largest tuber. But DW wanted to show off the hill she helped dig. so here is that one hill. These are Centenial's
And this is the way another hill came out all in one piece, with the exception of the one short end of one that broke off . if you look closely on the right of the pic you can see where it broke off.
WOW, are you feeding them things drugs? LOL They look wonderful.
rand; we need your pictures and comment in the Plantfiles. Centennial has only one photo. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/60028/
Farmerdill; I think I got several pictures loaded. 1 for sure. The rest may show up soon.
My brother swears by the Georgia Jet. He has had good luck with them.
I haven't seen the Copper Jewell advertised around here. Of course it is not easy getting the slips early enough to suit me anyway. For that reason I like starting my own. Besides it keeps me from getting cabin feaver.
I will be looking for some of the Copper's when spring gets a little closer. L8TER
Russ
Don't know what happened, I tried to send a picture of us snowed in. I guess I will have to try to move that pic to another file or something.
This message was edited Nov 12, 2007 1:13 PM
Great photos, they are all up. Centennial is a beautiful potato and very tasty. Its only drawback is the tendency to Jumbo. Have not grown Jets, but they show up well in trials. Copper Jewel also is vended as New Jewel. Lots of great cultivars out there and I try a new one every year. Leaning toward Hernandez for next year.
Farmer, I tried Hernandez in 2006. I didn't raise it again. Centennial last year was extremely long and skinny while the others were not that way.
Again, O'Henry is really smooth.
Today I was sorting through the sweet potatoes I dug and have a couple of questions.
1) I've got a lot of smallish/weird shaped roots, can I use these to grow slips from next spring or should I compost them and get better roots to grow slips from?
2) Most of the slips that produced I grew from roots I got at the supermarket. Is it easy to identify certain varieties? I want to do a better job next year of keeping track of exactly what I'm growing but the slips I mail-ordered came late, were very weak and most of them died on me so I'd rather grow my own.
3) Quite a few of the roots had little tiny holes about 1/4" across peppered all over them. Looked like some kind of insect damage to me. Whatever was eating on them never made it very far into the root and the holes seemed to be healed over. There were a lot of sowbugs on them when I pulled them out. Are the sowbugs doing that?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Jeff
Farmer I also had some ornamentals, in another area. It seems that the blackie can have a rather large tuber as well. Of course the tuber was not the main intent for them.
I am going to check again to see if I can get my comment to show up. I don't want to mislead anybody on my intent for showing the odd shapes and such.
1. I usually pick well formed potatoes from productive hills. The mall misshapen ones get baked first as they cure out fast and are just the right size for a bite sized snack. They also don't keep as well as baking sized ones.
2. No it is not easy to identify cultivars from the tubers. Fortunately only a few cultivars are grown commercially. Currently, North Carolina produces about 40% of the US sweet potato crop, with 70 % of that Beauregard (red skin) and 25% Hernandez (copper skin). So odds are if you get a an orange fleshed cultivar at the supermarket it will be one of those two. The other 5% is mostly the white fleshed White Delite. Before the introduction of these two, Jewel dominated the market for 20 years.
3.There are quite a pests that eat on the roots themselves, but with your descrption I vote for the Sweet potato weevil. http://ipm.ncsu.edu/AG295/html/sweetpotato_key.htm
Jkehl , I can't answer you on the sow bugs, but I was thinking you had a lot of dry weather this year.
We were wet for a long time, then dry for sever months. during the dry time I watered the garden from my fish pond, every once in a while, as that was a good place to get rid some of the water when the ammonia was getting a little high. I would change out about a fourth of the water that way. and of course that aided the garden as well. I also like to use all the leaves and grass clippings I can on the garden and till them under in the fall.
Last year I had several tubers that voles had burrowed down and ate the entire center out of several tubers. We also have quite a few cut worms. They will eat kind of a groove on the outer surface.
As far as only having small roots or tubers. I usually just scrub them good and mix them up with onions and some green peppers and make a tasty meal. They may not store till spring any way. I like to use the larger more uniform tubers to sprout my new slips. I don't know if that makes any difference or not, but I feel like it should.
Russ
Thanks Farmer I checked out that site. Looks like we were both typeing at the same time. and both had the same thought in mind. LOL
Thanks for the help. I will pick out the best ones(except for the two we already ate) to save for making slips and we'll eat the littler ones. I think they're Beauregard after looking at your picture in plant files. I'll see if I can't find some other types somewhere to grow slips from. I have all winter to look :)
Randb, yeah we were really dry this year and still are :( A lot of the lakes are drying up. I'm allowed to irrigate since I'm growing food, but I didn't have much other than hoses setup since I've only been doing this a year ana a half. So I concentrated on keeping a few things like tomatoes, peppers, corn alive and let most everything else fend for themselves. So I was happy to get any sweet potatoes.
I'll hopefully be setup with better irrigation by next year which will of course make it rain :)
Jeff
Jeff; I read on one forum. several people have set up a way to divert any rain that falls. or in your case might have fallen. on the roof went to the garden. But If it don't rain, That too would be worthless.
I mulch heavily with grass, leaves, newspaper or a combination of them I have even used sawdust. to help hold moisture down at the root level. We had a dry spell here too but definitely not as long as you. We got most of our rain in August. a little late but it still helped. I think that the dry may have some of the blame for some of the distorted tubers in my garden. Tho I don't know that for sure. But Farmerdill says that was one trait he didn't care for with Centennials. With me, it's ok as we don't sell any. And I kind of like to get larger sweet taters than one of my brothers, who has always had to out do any one else; kind of makes me feel good to have him admit, that he got out done by little brother.
He likes the Georgia Jet, which is a very good S/P for around here too. I will be trying to find some others this next spring. as I would like to have more uniform tubers in addition to some of the larger ones.
As I remember it when I bought the first slips Beauregard & Centennial were the two varieties that they offered. The Beauregard is favored by Louisiana growers. I try to raise enough to last the winter. and use them fixed many different ways. while most people around here only think of the S/P for Thanksgiving. and that being candied. I say under my breath of course, what a waste of a very healthful veggie. Not that I don't like them that way. It is just that is not the only way to fix them. And that is more sugar in the diet that isn't needed.
Oh I was also wondering when you planted them. I have to plant in the spring to give me the 100 days to maturity. But I read that in the warmer regions they plant later to avoid all the heat, So the plants aren't stressed as much with the heat. I'm trying to learn a little about differing planting times so I know about when some of the Internet friends are planting, mostly so I can identify with them.
Well good luck Jeff. Hope next year is better for you. If you can't locate any of the Centennial's and still want them. Just give a holler. But I know that when I bought some a couple years ago that Bonnie's gardens in Alabama supplied them to the farm home store where I got them. and I have just been starting my own ever since.
I enjoy it and it keeps me occupied, as well as cuts the cost of buying everything.
I just dug 5 bushells of "Beauregard" sweet potatoes. How long do I need to leave them spread out to cure before I can store them. By the way, I live in Beauregard Parish,La.--lol
I would say 4 or 5 days, wrenwood. Most would reccomend doing it out of the sun. I cure mine the USDA method which is different.
I see you are around Deridder. 50 years ago I was in Vernon Parish at Fort Polk.
I go ahead and wash them, and let them dry. I know that is not the way the USDA says. It works for me though, that way I don't get all that dirt in the kitchen sink. Any that are damaged in any way, are the first, that find their way to the table. Most keep very well. For some reason though, some do get a soft spot in one or two and they start to rot. But we go through most of them by the time spring rolls around. Although I save 2 or 3 really good ones for sprouting and rooting the sprouts.
I do have a question though. Are the Beauregard, crisp or a softer texture. I have been raising Centennials, They are crisp but, I get a lot of large tubers. and quite a few misshaped ones. So I am interested in a few other kinds to try. Thanks in advance Russ
This message was edited Nov 14, 2007 3:41 PM
Hey Randb,
I started growing slips in February and planted them out in early April. They didn't seem to mind the heat much but they were kind of sickly most of the summer because they never really got as much water as they seemed to want. I hit them with a soaker hose maybe once every 2-3 weeks and that was it.
I did mail-order some slips this year and planted them in late April. They basically just melted and died in the heat. Probably if I'd watched them closer and kept them watered they would have done fine.
I'm roasting a pan of sweet potatoes right now :) got to go check on them.
Jeff
Russ, we apparently don't speak the same language. I never think of a sweet potato as crisp. Centennial fits in the category I call moist. When baked they are juicy, what we old folks call honey drippers. Beauregard, Porto Rico, Georgia Red, Carver, Jewel and others are moist. The other type is the dry potato. They are not crisp, but have a dry flesh that holds its shape when baked. They can be almost as dry as a baked Irish potato. White Triumph is the ultimate example of this type, but most white and many yellow fleshed cultivars fall in this category.
I've been trying to remember where I read that Sweet potatoes like the cooler weather. Some growers try to plant late but still allowing for the needed 100- 110 days before frost. allowing them to take advantage of a little cooler weather. Which is something I don't need to worry too much about here. Yes we do reach the 90s but rarely reach the triple digits. and by the time the temp does get that high. there are enough tall leaves to shade all the lower ones and that is usually enough to hold the moisture in the soil.
We all know that there is never a gurantee of a good crop, when you are depending on rains for moisture. Much better odds than the lottery but no real gurantee. But if we don't plant. we are guranteed of no crop.
LOL
Maybe try with a few late ones, still allowing the needed 100 days, see what happens.
What is your first frost for your area??
We have on average about 30 days of triple digits,which sweet potatoes seem to like at least tolerate. They are almost as drought proof as the watermelons. Frost came early this year but usually about Thanksgiving. We do have Blackberry/Whippoorwill winter in late April/early May, so I begin setting transplants as it passes. Most years ( not this one with the late freeze) I could begin setting the first of April, but they don't start growing until the soil warms up so I don't gain anything with early setting.
Ok Farmer I guess My reference to crisp was . If you chunk them for a quicker cooking time. They don't really cut, they more or less break ahead of the knife. A little like a ripe watermelon. LOL
It is the ( moist ) sweet potatoes that I like. And yup. I have run into several different words, or discriptions for nearly the same meaning or thing. I have worked in several different states or areas. and sometimes had to think something over. Just one example we always called a long narrow spade with a rounded cutting edge, a tile spade.
When in Missouri. it was a sharp shooter. So ok, a little difference. No problem, :-).
I didn't get mine in untill some time in May, and noticed the same problem. but once they took off it didn't take long to fill the area with the vines.
Thanks Indy---I have them spread out on a hill beneath a redoak. They receive a little sun in am but shade most of morning. Do you spray with anything for weevil control?----Dean
I don't have sweetpotato weevils up here that I know of. It may be a southern problem.
Wrenwood; I don't have any problems here either, with weevils. I just make sure that they are dry. and store them in a cool dry place where the air can help keep them dry. like on wire rack, or screened trays. Even a few in a net bag. hanging up so the air can get to them . If you have too many for that, I guess you could freeze a bunch. Last year I cut up a bunch, in slices, and froze them in small portion, ( one meal size) food saver bags. If you do cut them up to freeze, I would suggest that you use a stainless steel knife. Carbon steel can make them turn black.
I am very limited on storage space, just a little room in the pantry. I haven't tried to can any. guess I could try that too. But when winter hits and its -30 F, I don't want them stored dry in the garage. LOL
I'll contact my extension Agent for his advice--Weevils a real problem down here. Thanks, Dean
