I was eating new sweet potatoes the last week of August this a year.
That’s about a month earlier than I typically dig them.
I could have waited, but I don’t think the potatoes could. Despite my efforts to keep them watered during several consecutive 90-plus days, the vines were showing the stress of the prolonged heat.
When I pulled some vines aside and noticed potatoes pushing up through the sun-baked soil, I reckoned they had done all they were going to do.
Digging them was not easy, despite liberal amendments of wood chips and rotted leaves. The first hill gave me several fully developed potatoes, but before digging many more I took my first fruits to the kitchen.
Normally I give sweet potatoes at least two or three weeks to cure. I recalled in hot seasons of the past, though, they came out of the ground as dry and as sweet as if they had been in the bin a month or more.
My initial test was a mess of sweet potato fries – nothing elaborate, just a potato cut into fries cooked in a shallow pan of cooking oil. They were the best ever.
A day later I dug more and made another mess of fries to go with barbecued pork burgers. Moreover, I needed only half of a large potato. The other half is waiting for another day.
Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite garden crops. Most years I buy a few slips from local garden stores or order some from a mail-order seed company. I’ve tried several varieties – Centennial, Georgia Jet, Vardaman, Beauregard and others. I’ve probably had my best crops with Beauregard and Centennial.
My best plants are usually those I start indoors in late winter or early spring.
Sprouting my own sweet potato slips gets me into gardening long before last frost, and it’s a fascinating, but simple, process.
I simply select four or five potatoes, suspend them about half-way down water in fruit jars, set them on a desk by a south-facing window, and let Mother Nature do the rest.
It takes no special equipment. Common toothpicks on four sides will hold the potatoes on the rim of the jar.
When the buds begins to grow, I let them go to about six inches, snap them off and suspend them in a shallow pan of water and wait for roots to form. Most often I like to transfer the slips to soil in peat pots and let them grow until planting in May.
Now, that’s a simplified version of what I do. Other folks may have their systems, but the principles will be the same.
As with any garden produce, you could likely find all the sweet potatoes you want at a farmers market – but maybe not for Thanksgiving dinner – and miss all the fun of growing your own.
And, frankly, I think the potatoes I’ve put my own sweat and time into are much sweeter than those from the store.
And if you’ve never tried it, make a sweet potato pie for the holiday table, rather than pumpkin – and save half the sugar.
One more thing: Don’t call them “yams,” no matter what you’ve heard. They’re not the same. Google it.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
