Ahhh! So you can trellis them, but it takes extra work. That sounds like something I should try, then! That way, they’ll keep having full sun on those leaves after my cucurbits inevitably decide to crawl over and sprawl huge leaves everywhere. (Laugh.)
Actually, I like the idea of tying them to a trellis. Last year, one squash I was trying to trellis up my back fence decided to crawl straight through and sprawl into my neighbor’s yard instead. (Squaaaaaaash!) My neighbors were nice about it and said they didn’t mind, but I still don’t want to be taking up part of their land.
I hadn’t thought about actually tying a plant to the fence. That sounds like a really good way to tell a stubborn plant that this is its growing space, not the ground past the fence. Hmm, and then maybe I could favor seeds from any plant that agrees to stay on its trellis with minimal difficulty? That may be a neat landrace goal!
If you end up selling clones, I would gladly pay whatever you ask for Mark. I’ve spent a lot of money on plant material and it is all worth it because it supports both the grower and me.
Just a note: if you would consider eventually sending seeds across the border, I would be very interested; whereas clones would not be practical. So maybe you’ll be able to do both, as Kerrianne suggested.
Being familiar with the characteristics of the race of the Novice Landracers, you’ll know that they’re sometimes willing to spend unreasonable amounts on special seeds!
I love all the sweet potato information you gathered here😍
I got a tiny handful of seeds from a mix of mostly purple sweet potatoes, especially the okinawa purple produced seeds. I really love the purple ones and find the orange too sweet. I planted the seeds like you said on the call and look what has appeared!
Do you plant them out and take cuttings to plant to see production or do you just evaluate production from the seedling plants?
I have a very long growing season between march and january.
Some professional breeding videos I have watched they make like 4 cuttings to have bigger sample to evaluate yield. They also did some selecting before that by selecting strongest and also checking tuber colour after they started forming. I would use quite similar approach. My plan (when I get seeds) is quite similarly first year not to select strongest, but to cull weakest and have bigger sample to evaluete yield next year. One plant might just have good or bad luck and not show it’s full potential until next year.
@MarkReed Have you tried eating the greens from your sweet potato varieties? (I’m sorry if you already discussed this elsewhere.) I’ve never got around to trying any, and I’ve heard there is a lot of variability in how edible they are.
My favorite use for productive nutritious plants that I don’t like to eat is to feed them to a critter that I later eat Not helpful for everyone but still my favorite use.
Hey, that’s great! If it keeps living, that sounds like a seedling to grow to maturity. It would be great to have a line of sweet potatoes that can handle light frosts without dying.
Yeah, that makes sense! Especially since they’re a vine that seems to like being on the ground, it would make sense for them to be able to handle some shade. It would be great if they even like it – a bit of shade through the afternoon here would be very useful to keep transpiration from dehydrating them during hot summer days!
I’m thinking I want to try growing sweet potatoes in a polyculture with bananas. I suspect the two would grow very well together, and not complete for anything. I’ve even heard of people growing sweet potatoes with bananas, and the sweet potato vines climbing up the banana stalks! That seems like a potentially very interesting companion planting.
My thinking is that I can leave the bananas underdisturbed when harvesting the sweet potatoes. Here’s how I’m planning to arrange things.
Bananas (unfortunately, for those of us who want drought tolerance) have small, shallow, soft roots that don’t spread very far past the clump. Happily, they don’t seem to mind root disturbance overly much – in fact, chopping chunks off the root in order to plant those somewhere else is how banana plants are usually cloned.
Bananas want well-draining soil, and our winter soil is sodden and wet, so I’ve decided to plant them on a berm, with a swale right underneath. The swale will hopefully give the bottom of their roots more water in summer, and the top of the corm (the part that is most susceptible to rot) less water in winter.
Since I’ll be growing sweet potatoes as an annual during the hot, dry season, it makes sense to plant them in a swale. There’ll be a big swale right there!
The banana corms will be a foot or two above where I’m digging for sweet potato roots. Digging sweet potatoes out of the swales can also be part of my process of moving soil from swale to berm in preparation for winter. (I’m assuming the soil will settle downwards somewhat every year, so I’ll need to do some work to maintain the shape every year.)
Meanwhile, I’ll put brassicas around the bananas on top of the berm, in hopes that they will act as a living mulch (and water-drinker) to protect the bananas through the winter.
I figure the brassicas will get full sun in the spring when they’re flowering, the bananas will get full sun in the summer while they’re flowering, and the sweet potatoes will get plenty of sun by sprawling around them while they’re flowering. At least, that’s my hope!
Not sure if it’s the same thing, but I have mainly done them upright and usually there aren’t problems. Sometimes they sprout so thightly like you discriped that for a while they grow slowly. Some do rot and some are slow to sprout, but i’m not sure what is normal rate of success. This year I had one that had little sprouts when I put it in, sprouts up. Nothing happened for about month and it started rotting under ground. Before rot could spread I cut it off and this time put sprouts down. They came up in around week or so. What I’m thinking is that having sprouts/nodes under ground is good thing. Maybe it’s something to do with how they grew and one side has more potential to sprout. I have noticed similar thing before, but this really stood out because situation looked so dire and I did not think it would survive at all. Whatever the cause it seems that there is always some luck involved.
I think you’re right, and it growing back from a root is probably what happened!
Pretty neat, all things considered, because sweet potatoes that can be left in the ground in the fall and sprout back in the spring in cold climates would be very convenient to have.
Just now came in from transplanting it. Perfectly normal seedling root system and on closer inspection little healed over spots where the cotyledons were. The case of the missing cotyledons will remain unsolved I reckon. Still, it’s a nice little volunteer plant and not all that much behind the cultivated ones in size.
Not helpful for everyone but still my favorite use.
