Sweet Potatoes

Hi folks,i`ve searched the site AND tried using the search `thingy`(which doesn`t seem to work for me)and i`ve not been able to find the info i`m after,so,i`ll ask.Is it possible to grow sweet potatoes in this country? Thanking you in anticipation...freddy

 

After a few non serious attempts freddy I would be inclined to say, only in a greenhouse, and then it may not be worthwhile.
But there may be someone out there having real sucsess

 

Ahh well,`tis a pity cos i really like them,thanks for the info anyway....cheers.....freddy.

 

If they are going like a vine and need supports, does that mean they are not getting enough light so probably not hot enough in the UK?

 

For anyone who's interested, thought I'd share my experience of growing these for the first time this year.

I went for a 'trial pack' of 3 different varieties; Beauregard, Georgia Jet and T65. There were five plants of each variety, four of each were planted outside in the vegetable plot, one of each was grown in the greenhouse.

I lifted them all yesterday, surprisingly the outdoor grown plants all produced far better results than those in the greenhouse.

In terms of yield, T65 was the best variety producing plenty of good sized tubers.
Georgia Jet also yielded quite well, producing fewer tubers than T65, but these were slightly larger on the whole.
Beauregard performed poorly, coming a distant third in terms of both yield and size.

We took the experiment one stage further and cooked a selection of each for a taste test with Sunday dinner today.

The general consensus was that for flavour, there was little to choose between T65 and Georgia Jet. The latter were perhaps marginally sweeter, while T65 had a slightly smoother texture and were less dry.
Beauregard was again a poor third in terms of both flavour and texture.

Anyone else tried growing Sweet Potatoes? Since this is my first attempt, I don't know how this year's crop would compare with other years. I'm on free draining sandy soil, so I assume the wet summer has resulted in a better than crop than I could normally expect.

Would be interested to hear of anyone else's experience with these.

 

I have a binful of plants from Homebase Jamie Oliver slips. Will be digging them up very soon and will let you know what comes of it.

 

Following on from my experiment last year (see post above) I decided to grow Sweet Potatoes again this year.

I lifted them today and here are the results, just over 30lbs of tubers from ten 'T65' plants grown outdoors:



Taking into account the initial cost of buying the plants, or 'slips', in the spring (£14 for 10 plants) this works out at about 46p per lb. (A quick look on a leading supermarket's website showed them at around £1.50 per lb).

So, having grown them for the past two years, I thought I'd share a few observations which may be useful to anyone else considering growing Sweet Potatoes.

Pros:
Fairly easy to grow. After planting out, they pretty much look after themselves. All that's needed is a good watering every day in dry weather and a decent fertile soil to grow them in.

Relatively trouble free. They don't seem to be prone to any pests or diseases, all I've had is some minor slug damage to the foliage, but this only amounted to a few 'nibbles' which had no detrimental effect on the plants' growth.

Little weeding required. Once they get going, the foliage quickly forms a dense ground cover which smothers most weeds effectively.

Cons:
Initial care. The young slips are normally delivered around mid April and have to be potted up immediately, then grown on in a frost free place until planting out in June. They will take up space in your conservatory or greenhouse.

Harvesting. The tubers can be difficult to dig up, some of them form quite deep in the ground and require considerable effort to unearth. I have yet to find an effective way of digging them up without damaging several in the process, as they seem to break quite easily. Also, they spread themselves around, some being close to the surface while others are quite deep down.

Variability of tubers. The crop produced is usually a mixture of shapes and sizes, with little uniformity. This has no bearing on the flavour of course, but can make preparation a bit fiddly.

 

They look good Trunky...how much space do the plants take up?

 

Blimey, one of my first threads
A very good looking crop there

 

They're planted about 2ft apart Lol, although they spread out a fair bit once they get going.
By the end of the summer those 10 plants had covered a patch of ground about 6ft x 15ft.

 

Now look what you've started you old devil you