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Sweet Potatoes

W

wordwiz

Perhaps the perfect food, at least as far as nutrition is concerned. I had them as a child (not the canned kind but fried or baked) then after becoming "urbanized" I've only had them from the can for the last 35 years.

My wife developed diabetes and I had to find some friendly foods to fix for Turkey day. Yams were at the top of the list. Of course, this means I need to grow some next year. And this means if I am going to grow a few, I may as well try to grow a bunch. The two most-promising varieties seem to be Beauregard and Georgia Jet. The former is said to produce up to 25,000 pounds per acre! BTW, I am not looking at anything close to that many plants; 200 of them should be more than enough as I would sell what we don't need for ourselves at a Farmers Market and whatever is left over at a huge discount to a produce store.

If you have grown sweet potatoes, any recommendations?

Mike
 
Mike, are you classifying yams and sweet potatoes as one and the same?

They are different tubers with very different qualities, I'll state up front I am a consumer and not a grower of these vegetables(yet); I do grow carrots, beets, potatoes and rutabegar(not turnip).

Yams are ready available here all year round but sweet potato is harder to find, though I have had sweet potato and had a chance to compare and at the time I noted I liked sweet potatoes better.
I eat yams weekly, if not roasted or baked and sometimes I mash them with rutabegar.

I was doing my research last month because I thought maybe of substituting s/p over the yam for our thanksgiving dinner, everything I read says yam is sweeter but from what I remembered the s/p was sweeter and easier to work with. I find yam harder to cut and they never cut cleanly so its hard to get nice even cubes or slices; everytime I cut into yam I cam afraid of loping off a finger. I find yams very starchy, or at least the type I purchase and I don't know the variety. I remember the sweet potato being as easy to work with as a potato and baked up nicely.
 
In the Edmonton area, this is what we are getting for a Jewel yam.

http://www.specialtyproduce.com/index.php?item=5553

To see a sweet potato, click on 'potatoes sweet' on the left hand margin.

dvg
 
From my reading, what is sold in the US (except for specialty markets) and not yams but sweet potatoes. DVG, your link even calls it a sweet potato in the description. Supposedly, they are interchangeable in recipes.

Mike
 
Mike, I would say that they are interchangeable in recipes.

I find the yams to be oranger, sweeter and more mushy when baked in an oven.

We had the sweet potato last night and it was a paler yellow color, not quite as sweet as a Jewel yam, and seemed to have more of a fibrous texture to it.

I ended up cutting it up with a knife, while the yam could be easily mashed with a fork.

dvg
 
Dvg,

The Jewel Yams, from all I have read, are actually sweet potatoes. There can be a huge difference in taste, texture, etc., between sweet potatoes, though. This is a cite I found in trying to learn more about them:
Although yams and sweet potatoes are both angiosperms (flowering plants), they are not related botanically. Yams are a monocot (a plant having one embryonic seed leaf) and from the Dioscoreaceae or Yam family. Sweet Potatoes, often called ‘yams’, are a dicot (a plant having two embryonic seed leaves) and are from the Convolvulacea or morning glory family.

I'm trying to get some purple sweet potato slips. Supposedly, they are among the sweetest and most nutritious potatoes.

Mike
 
wordwiz said:
... The two most-promising varieties seem to be Beauregard and Georgia Jet.
Click to expand...

Hi Mike.

I was a small potato grower (excuse the pun). I use to grow like 12-18 sweet potato plants. I've grown both Beauregard and Georgia Jet, and I think you'll like either one.

I also grew O'Henry and it may be worth considering. Good baking potato. Smooth skin with no strings. Sweet with a nutty overtone. The potatoes grow close together and make for easier digging (notice I didn't say "easy" digging lol). A couple of things that may be troublesome to you: 1) this potato is not orange. They're a cream color with golden flesh, and 2) they're at about 100 DTM. They're awfully tasty though.

Another tidbit I found out. I now grow regular potatoes, which you start from a "seed", which isn't a seed in the classic since (but that's another story). Anyway, what I learned is regular potatoes start forming at the "seed" and continue to develop UP the stalk as the plant grows. Sweet potatoes start developing just below the soil level and continue to develop DOWN as the roots mature.

Moral of the story? Make sure you've got good loose soil beneath your slips to 18".

Now I know you knew that, but just in case you didn't... :)

Good luck. I hope ya grow a ton!
 
DownRiver,

No way will I have loose soil 18" deep, it is going to be compacted, but it should be a rich, earthy type, not clay. This is what I am facing - I have about 15,000 sf of ground I can use but supposedly, the dirt is rather shallow (3-6" sitting on some debris with good creek dirt under it). There is about maybe 500-600 sf of ground that appears to mostly soil, maybe twice that. That is where I will try to grow the sweet potatoes as I can get 100 growing days in all but the most bizarre years.

My backyard garden has about 1500 sf of room but 200 sf of that is taken up with a greenhouse. It will partly be used (about 40 sf) to hold seed trays but I can grow something like Okinawa SP in the rest. Very loose ground that I can easily amend with compost, horse manure and other goodies.

I want to grow some dwarf fruit trees: two cherries and two apples. That's going to knock out another 200 sf. This will leave me with about 900 sf. Of that, I want to grow some toms, peppers, broccoli and cukes - enough so if we want something for dinner I don't really have to drive to my large garden to harvest. There goes another 200-300 sf. This leaves me with 600-700 sf to grow stuff in. I'm thinking the best use (I want to become a professional Farm Marketer in a couple of years) is to grow berries - straw, black and blue.

Of course, this is still mid-December and I don't have to finalize anything before March or so. But I want to start the FM circuit next year, hopefully three days per week. Might as well try to make some money doing something I enjoy!

Mike
 
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