Harvested my first sweet potato today!

1208 Views 19 Replies 9 Participants Last post by rainbuilder, Sep 27, 2012

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · Sep 15, 2012

I dug up my first sweet potato out of my garden today. I candied it and it is very very very good. It was a huge fat one that looked like a very large beet. I am also going to stir fry the greens with some jalapenos and chives from the garden as well. It's so satisfying to be able to grow your own food!

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crazydaz

· #2 · Sep 15, 2012

Pictures, or it didn't happen.

Good for you! Eating something you've grown and prepared yourself is much more satisfying, somehow.

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 15, 2012 (Edited)

3

Gaze upon its majesty.

Plant Food Fruit Terrestrial plant Grass

Not cracked or anything either.

Candied a few hours later.

Food Ingredient Recipe Galantine Staple food

Also, if you look in the background of the first picture, you can see my 7 remaining mounds of potatoes.

Edit: Here's my second mound of potatoes. More than the first!

Food Plant Ingredient Natural foods Root vegetable

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ValMM

· #4 · Sep 15, 2012

That's a nice potato. We grew tomatoes this year. We got 7 baby plants in the beginning of summer and I ended up making 2 pots of spaghetti sauce at the end of summer.

DogFish

· #5 · Sep 15, 2012

Well done!

Really hards summer with the heat wave for us. A few tomatoes, herb garden surveyed somehow. Good news bumper drop of Thai Peppers being from seed from the prior years harvest extra good!

Going to try my hand at making hot sauce. In the past I just air dried them and used that way.

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · #6 · Sep 15, 2012

ValMM said:
That's a nice potato. We grew tomatoes this year. We got 7 baby plants in the beginning of summer and I ended up making 2 pots of spaghetti sauce at the end of summer.

That's great! Tomatoes really haven't done that great for us here. That's why I tried sweet potatoes

Sounds like you have good gardening skills.

DogFish said:
Well done!

Really hards summer with the heat wave for us. A few tomatoes, herb garden surveyed somehow. Good news bumper drop of Thai Peppers being from seed from the prior years harvest extra good!

Going to try my hand at making hot sauce. In the past I just air dried them and used that way.

Yeah, the heat wave was hard. None of our tomatoes really produced very much, even though one of my plants grew about 6 feet tall. My herbs survived and thrived though, with a 2 or 3 year old chive plant leading the way. The basil turned into a shrub, and my mint plants grew like weeds as usual.

That's really good that your peppers grew good, homemade hot sauce is always the best! They are the really spicy kind I'm assuming?

DogFish

· #7 · Sep 15, 2012

Thai Peppers are typically the 2" hot Peppers you get in Chinese Food like Kung Pow chicken. I like that size for drying and cooking.

I've tried a Bulgaian this year, that is a mild hot pepper that mitght be used in sallad. I also grew Scotch Bonnet Habeneros that are little yellow very hot peppers from Jamacia? And a Bhut Jolokia 'Ghost Pepper' from India which is insanely hot even for people that eat hot peppers.

The Bhut Jolokia is just Now starting to produce fruit. It's in a 5gl bucket soif I do need to bring it indoors I can.

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · #8 · Sep 15, 2012

That's really neat. We've never really grown anything but jalapenos. My uncle has grown Bhut Jolokias but I haven't eaten them. The yellow Jamaican ones sound good. You seem to be an avid pepper fan!

ValMM

· #9 · Sep 18, 2012

rainbuilder said:
That's great! Tomatoes really haven't done that great for us here. That's why I tried sweet potatoes Sounds like you have good gardening skills.

Thank you.

They took a long time to ripen the fruit, since the ones in the flowerbed were in the shade of the shed for most of the day. The ones out front were in pots and had tomatoes smaller than your fist, but they tasted great. All I did was water them each morning with the watering can. When it was really hot, my mom and I watered them in the evening as well.

TheBigSleep

· #10 · Sep 19, 2012

That's a heck of a potato! Ever tried dicing beets, sweet potatoes & cauliflower, brushing them all with olive oil / salt / pepper then oven roasting it all? Deliciousness.

And, hotsauce hotsauce hotsauce hotsauce!

I don't grow peppers but looove making hotsauce. My general method is to buy as many different kinds of peppers as I can find at the farmstand, cut em up & broil them until slightly blackened, throw them in the blender with a couple cloves of oven-roasted garlic / pinch of sea salt, fine black pepper, granulated sugar & a touch of cinnamon / diced & sweated white onion / white vinegar for consistency, then let it simmer in a pot for an hour or two & feed more vinegar as needed. Bottle it, let it sit in the fridge for a week or so then strain with cheese cloth & enjoy. Hotsaaauuuuuce! Mmmmm!

Obakemono

· #11 · Sep 19, 2012

Dat's a big sweet tater!

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · #12 · Sep 26, 2012

TheBigSleep said:
That's a heck of a potato! Ever tried dicing beets, sweet potatoes & cauliflower, brushing them all with olive oil / salt / pepper then oven roasting it all? Deliciousness.

And, hotsauce hotsauce hotsauce hotsauce!

I don't grow peppers but looove making hotsauce. My general method is to buy as many different kinds of peppers as I can find at the farmstand, cut em up & broil them until slightly blackened, throw them in the blender with a couple cloves of oven-roasted garlic / pinch of sea salt, fine black pepper, granulated sugar & a touch of cinnamon / diced & sweated white onion / white vinegar for consistency, then let it simmer in a pot for an hour or two & feed more vinegar as needed. Bottle it, let it sit in the fridge for a week or so then strain with cheese cloth & enjoy. Hotsaaauuuuuce! Mmmmm!

No I have not tried that! Sounds really good!

Obakemono said:
Dat's a big sweet tater!

It definitely is! I actually harvested some more of almost equal size!

allegoriest

· #13 · Sep 26, 2012

OH GOD YOU KILLED ITTTTT

Your potato vines are so luscious and huge. Mine are tiny, but this weekend, I found out my soil PH is REALLY bad for them, but I've started adjusting it.

But... uhh... is there a way to know where the potatoes are? Mine are mostly groundcover, but I'm kinda curious about it.

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · #14 · Sep 26, 2012

Well mine were just at the base of where I planted the stems. You can dig around under there and kind of find where they are and tell if they're big enough for harvesting, just cover it back up if you do.

Robotponys

· #15 · Sep 26, 2012

Wow stop making me wish I had a garden! Sounds soooo good!

Tank journal, please visit and give advise

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=187460
-Tapatalk

rocksmom

· #16 · Sep 27, 2012

Oh my god that second picture has me drooling. Can't... wait... for... Thanksgiving!

Nice sweet potato too. The husband and I are going to set up some raised beds (we're overrun with gophers here) and grow some winter crops soon. That picture is definitely inspirational.

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · #17 · Sep 27, 2012

Heres the second potato bunch I harvested:

Food Plant Ingredient Natural foods Root vegetable

Keeping the smaller ones for seed next year.

Robotponys:
They're really fun to have! I love my garden!

Rocksmom:
These are actually really good summer plants, because they don't mind the heat and actually thrive in it. I live in Texas and grew these over the summer no problem, so they are pretty heat hardy. They don't like the cold, so they may not work as winter crops depending on your location. I've definitely been impressed with these, you should really try them.

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allegoriest

· #18 · Sep 27, 2012

Wait, they have seeds? I've been taking a potato from the store that started to grow, submerging half in a vase, pulling off stems as they grow, putting THOSE in a vase until they get roots, plant in plastic containers until lots of roots, then planting in ground. (it also only uses one potato.)

Some of mine actually didn't make it this summer. ;___; but some are doing pretty good.

rocksmom

· #19 · Sep 27, 2012

Oh sorry if my post was confusing. I didn't mean we were going to plant sweet potatoes as a winter crop, I just meant your pictures in general were inspirational. We're going to try lettuce, peas, and spinach. They're supposed to be fall/winter crops here, but we have so many microclimates around San Diego that we'll have to see how they do here in the mountains.

rainbuilder

Discussion Starter · #20 · Sep 27, 2012

allegoriest said:
Wait, they have seeds? I've been taking a potato from the store that started to grow, submerging half in a vase, pulling off stems as they grow, putting THOSE in a vase until they get roots, plant in plastic containers until lots of roots, then planting in ground. (it also only uses one potato.)

Some of mine actually didn't make it this summer. ;___; but some are doing pretty good.

You're doing it right - what I meant is that I'm going to use them for seed, like as in growing the stems out of them since they're smaller and not big enough to want to eat. They're my 'seeds' for next years crops, or just small potatoes and not actual seeds.

Rocksmom: Oh, I see! That sounds good. We've never really grown anything over the winter so that's really neat. They should grow fine in the mountains, you could use old tires and stack them and fill with dirt and plant the potatoes inside. The gophers wouldn't really be able to get inside of there, and the raised bed would keep them from cracking from too much water.

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