The 2017 growing season

Just a quick update on how the sweet potatoes are fairing this year.

I tried growing slips as usual from tubers I grew last year. All produced a good number of slips with the exception of Burgundy. The tuber I'd saved just stubbornly refused to grow any shoots. It made a half-hearted attempt to put out some roots but even these were pretty feeble. As I've done previously, I wondered if I'd got the wrong end of the tuber in the water. So I turned it upside down and tried again, with no joy. So I'm afraid it's farewell to growing Burgundy sweet potatoes. They just don't like it here.

This year I put my mini polytunnels out on the allotment before I was ready to plant out each set of slips. Thought it might help to warm the soil for them. They were planted out during May.

The photo below was taken at the end of August.

From the bottom of the image up, the first row is Evangeline. These slips weren't particularly big when I planted them out and there isn't a huge amount of vine growth yet. Likewise with the next row up, which is Beauregard. Next comes Belle Vue followed by the very healthy rows of Bonita and Murasaki. Just about in view at the top of the image is Orleans.

So it looks again that the white tubered plants of Bonita and Murasaki are going to produced the best crop. I'll find out in a couple of months!

Already I'm thinking I might try and source a couple of new varieties to replace the poor performers. I don't know why, especially as they taste pretty much the same, but I still prefer the 'usual' coloured tubers....

2016 - And a New Plan

I had a new plan for growing my sweet potatoes this year; if I started growing the slips earlier then surely the plants would be bigger and stronger when it came to planting them out! If they were bigger and stronger then they would fend off frost attack better and just generally be ahead of where they were in 2015?

So instead of waiting until early 2016 before starting off my slip growing, I started them off towards the end of 2015, in November/December. I followed the same method as before, selecting a decent sized tuber and putting into a jar of water to encourage it to start growing roots and slips.

I had managed to save tubers from all of the varieties I grew in 2015 with the exception of Burgundy. The tubers I harvested from that variety were just too small to produce any growth.

The remaining tubers produced slips as expected and I potted on the first ones towards the end of December 2015.

I started planting out the plants towards the end of May this year. All the plants were bigger and more healthy looking than the previous years.

My other part of this year's plan was to cover the plants in plastic for the whole time they were planted out. Sweet potatoes need a long warm growing season. I can give them a long season but the warmth is something that can't be guaranteed in the UK so I bought a bunch of mini polytunnels from Marshalls Seeds, figuring that should keep them nice and warm all year and would also extend the growing season each end.

This year I've also been lucky enough to trial a few more varieties, one was Burgundy and the others were Orleans and Belle Vue. These all came from a wholesale grower in Ireland, Fiztgerald Nurseries, these were all planted out in June.

The new to me varieties:

Orleans - a light rose skin with orange flesh

Belle Vue - a light orange skin with orange flesh.

I was quite excited to try these new ones as well as have another chance to grow Burgundy which is supposed to have the best taste.

Joanna