Follow The Beginning Farmer's Wife on Facebook for additional personal peeks at building a family farm.

(Be sure to click both the Facebook "like" and "follow" buttons to not miss any posts.)

Sunday, March 2, 2008

It's Time to Start Sweet Potatoes!


Well, almost.

I thought I would give you a fair warning though so you could get to the store to pick up your starters in case you don't have any laying around. If you are looking to just experiment with them this year, one or two should do. If you are wanting a bumper crop though, you might want a bit more.

I plan on posting step by step instructions for sprouting, starting, and growing your own sweet potatoes. I gave them a try myself for the first year last year so I don't consider myself an expert, but I do have an older farmer who is an expert that is guiding me through the process again. I will share his information with you, and I would love any tips or advice you might have to share with me!

I am estimating that I will officially start them in the next week or two so if you are interested in joining me, pick some up at your local grocery store.

Here we go!!

(I decided to edit this post to add a brief picture of what this process will look like, just in case you want to know what you are getting into. The sweet potatoes that you buy at the store will be sprouted by positioning them in water properly. The sprouts will form vines which will eventually be broken off to root in water. The rooted vines will be what gets planted in the garden. Hope that helps!)


Follow The Beginning Farmer's Wife on Facebook for additional personal peeks at building a family farm.

3 comments:

QuiltedSimple said...

How easy are they to grow? How many potatoes will say a couple sweet potatoes yield? We like them baked or cut into fries and deep fried - might have to jump on the bandwagon for this one. .
Kris

The Beginning Farmer's Wife said...

Quilted Simple,
I thought these were REALLY easy to grow last year, however, I didn't ask my resident expert enough questions last year to get a really good crop. I didn't start them soon enough or do the process quite right.

Even so, I ended up with 4 yummy sweet potatoes from one planted vine. I would have been more successful if I would have asked more questions!

As far as how many one starter potato will yield if done the right way, I still have to find that out myself this year. I do know that one starter potato will produce many vines - which will turn into individual garden plants.

I think I am going to try 4-5 starter potatoes this year. I don't want to take up too much garden space until I really have this process down.

Hopefully some people who have done this before will be able to jump in with some extra tips! I'm excited though!!

GeonHui's Bakery said...

Yeah! I'm excited!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...