Home With Joe

Here in Tennessee it’s getting warm enough to plant my sweet potatoes. They are really easy to grow. You get a lot of food, and they keep all winter in a cool, dry place. The plants choke out most weeds, and they are not that picky about the type of soil or how often you water.

The first year I grew them, I bought plants from a seed catalog. The second year, I sprouted a potato from the year before. That can be a little risky, because you may not have a living potato left in the spring. Since then, I’ve kept a couple of plants growing indoors year-round. They are in a big pot, next to a bright window. I water them twice a week. Every fall I replace the plants with new cuttings, and by spring they are big enough to make cuttings for the garden. Sometimes, I find a potato or two in the pot.

In the spring, I cut 6 inch sections from the indoor plants and root them in a jar of water. Roots will grow from the nodes, where a leaf is connected. I usually cut off the bottom leaf or two so the stem will fit in the jar. Make sure you leave a few leafs on the stem.

After roots develop for almost a week, I plant the cuttings in old cottage cheese containers with peat moss or potting soil. They can stay in those until the weather permits planting them outdoors.

Last fall, I had to literally chisel the sweet potatoes out of the ground because the dirt is so hard. This year, I’m not planting them in the ground. I have a plastic barrel that I bought at the flea market. It used to have vinegar in it, so I know it wasn’t used for poisonous chemicals. I cut the barrel in half to plant the sweet potatoes in, and drilled drainage holes in the bottoms. I am filling the halves with a mixture of top soil and peat moss.

I hope my container experiment works, and I’ll be able to pull out a lot of big sweet potatoes in the fall.

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