Sprouting Sweet Potatoes

Here's a new experiment:

Sprouting locally-grown garnet sweet potatoes in jam jars, and planting them!

These sweet potatoes sat in Mason jars for about a month, unfurling lush foliage and vigorous root growth. I planted two of them whole into the bins vacated by the White Kennebec 'taters.

Sweet potato start in large bin.

As you can see, I mulched the top of this bin heavily with rabbit litter. For the small bin, I filled the bottom up with more rabbit litter, topped with about 6 inches of potting soil. On top of both went more rabbit litter.

Regular potatoes, "sweet potatoes", and "true yams", are three radically different botanical families.

Regular potatoes of all colors are in the Nightshade family along with tomatoes and peppers.

True Yams are a tuber unto themselves, growing up to 150 pounds per tuber and used as a valuable token in some Islander economies

"Sweet Potatoes" like the ones I show here, familiar in Thanksgiving casseroles with marshmallows on top, belong to the Morning Glory family.

They are supposed to develop nice, tentacle-looking tuber production just under the soil over the course of their 3-5 year lifespan.

At the same time, unlike potatoes of the Nightshade family, you can eat the leafy foliage of Sweet Potatoes like spinach pot-herbs, as a fresh or cooked green. So diverse!

Wish me luck with this experiment to see how well I can grow Sweet Potatoes on my suburban farm. Thanks so much and cheers.

Love,cat
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