Harvesting Sweet Potatoes

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I expect that some of you will remember that I have been experimenting with growing Sweet Potatoes this year. I haven’t mentioned them for a while, because nothing needed doing to them, but with the prospect of frost very close now I decided to dig up the Sweet Potato plants and see what the harvest was like.

Well, it wasn’t very impressive:

(As an aside, don’t you think the lid of our blue wheelie-bin makes a good photo background?!)

That’s it. There are four tubers of a useable size, and about a dozen wispy “tiddlers”. However, you have to see this in the light of the fact that they were grown from some sprouts on some Past-Their-Sell-By-Date supermarket vegetables. And by someone with zero prior experience of growing this vegetable. And in a year in which we had no perceptible Summer!

I think in future I will leave growing Sweet Potatoes to people who live in warmer climes.

I will be completing the procedure in the approved manner by “curing” the tubers for 10 days or so before attempting to cook them. Apparently this improves their flavour and sweetness, as well as their keeping properties (though this latter will not be of much concern to me!)

If you are interested in reading more about how I grew these things, you might want to read or re-read this: Planting Sweet Potatoes.

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