Crikey! Pushing this barrow full of sweet
potato is hard Yakka i better put him down and have a rest
G'day I'm mark from Self Sufficient Me and in this video I'm gonna give you
my 5 top tips on how to grow a ton of sweet potato in a garden bed just like
this one... Let's get into it In our subtropical climate, sweet potato
is one of the few vegetables that you can grow all year round unlike regular
potatoes which can only be grown at certain times. Did you know that sweet
potatoes isn't related to potatoes at all? In fact, it's part of the Morning
Glory family of climbing plants which are known more for flowers then tubers. I
don't know about you guys but in my circles Morning Glory means something
completely different but let's not elaborate on that nevertheless we've
been growing sweet potato for over a decade and I've only seen the vines
flower a handful of times but we don't grow it for the flowers and even though
the leaves are edible and can be used like spinach we mainly cultivate this
excellent and easy to grow backyard vegetable for its deliciously nutritious
tubers. Tip number one - Propagating: this here is a sweet potato cutting that I've
grown in a pot for about three or four weeks some common types of sweet potato
are white skin with white flesh purple flesh and the other two I've grown are
the orange with orange flesh and red or purple skin with white flesh. I haven't
noticed much difference in taste between the orange and these white flesh
varieties except the orange ones might be a little bit sweeter and these white
flesh varieties with the red or purple skin tend
to have a better pest resistance overall well, that's just what I've found anyway.
There are several ways to produce new sweet potato plants. You can use a full
tuber like this and this is how we first started growing sweet potato we simply
bought a tuber from the store and planted it into the garden bed and
off it sprouted and grew like crazy! You could also start a tuber in a pot and
then plant it out once it's growing well or place a tuber in a container or glass
with some water and after about a month it will sprout from several places you
can then harvest these what they call "slips" like cuttings to make several new
plants. Sweet potato cuttings take root very easily you can directly plant them
into the garden where you want them to grow and keep well watered they should
strike. Or, place the cuttings in a pot with premium potting mix and they'll
soon start growing well like this one here we have a wild area down the back
there that acts like a ground cover so if we ever need fresh propagation
material we just take some cuttings pot them up and then plant them out to where
we want them. Tip number two - Planting: we like to plant sweet potato in its own
bed or a container and I say sweet potato is easy to grow but in some
climates like ours (hot subtropical) it grows so well that it can actually be
hard to control we even need to attack it with a whipper snipper to stop it
taking over the whole veggie patch and this vigorous growth habit is something
you should take into consideration if you're thinking about planting sweet
potato with other crops because it's vigorous nature will take over the
bed and suffocate out most other plants this bed here though, having said all
that, is a really good example of how I under planted sweet potato and then grew
other crops on top such as tomatoes and salad greens and when those other crops
were finished the sweet potato gradually took over the bed. As for positioning,
sweet potato grows best in full Sun but it will also grow quite well in part
shade. In cool or cold climates, grow sweet potato as an annual through the
hottest part of the year planting out into the garden after the
last frost and give it as long as possible to grow before harvesting. There
apparently are faster growing varieties for shorter seasons that are better
suited to growing in colder climates so if you do live in a cool climate perhaps
try experimenting with these shorter season varieties. You can train sweet
potato vines up a trellis or let it sprawl over a garden bed I prefer the
latter because sprawling sweet potato vine is a good weed suppressant and
growing it up a structure can unnecessarily shade out other plants. The
other important tip about letting the vine spread over the ground is this
method allows it to take root in other places and these can develop into tubers
resulting in larger harvests. Tip number 3 - Crumbly loose soil: now soil will
compact over time so these beds were prepared about 12 months ago
but let's have a look and see how well the soil is... Yeah, it's still pretty good
in here I didn't set this up... it's nice and
crumbly no problems I'm sure it's compacted a little more in
other places but the bottom line is sweet potato really loves soil that's
full of organic matter and crumbly it hates hard ground or clay soil and a
particularly detests water logging. Boggy ground and over watering will just
produce rotten tubers crumbly loose soil with lots of rich organic matter is the
way to go and the best way to start your sweet potato crop
if the soil in the bed has compacted down over time I recommend loosening the
top of 30 centimeters by forking and digging fertilize initially but not
regularly because you want the plant to root down and
create tubers for its own storage food reserves over fertilising will get lots
of top growth but not as many tubers. Sweet potato will often grow close to
the surface but hard soil will force the tubers up and out of the topsoil which
can make them perish, crack, and become exposed to pests such as rodents chewing
on them. Tip number four - Pest and disease control
I've already mentioned how rodents and other animals like to eat sweet potato
tubers and some produce loss should be expected from time to time because
that's just how it is especially for organic backyard growers.
Same with the leaves, don't worry about grasshoppers or caterpillars eating and
damaging the leaves unless the vine is totally getting stripped which is very
unlikely in this case you could use an organic chewing insect spray and just
spray it over the leaves but 99% of the time the plant will survive fine on its
own even with plenty of damage from insects so intervention really isn't
required. Sweet potato is one of the best pest resistant plants I grow and it can
be grown in the same location for several seasons in a row, however, I do
recommend finding a new garden bed to plant it in about every two to three
years the main reason for this is to prevent an accumulation of soil-borne
pests and diseases that will develop over time things like slugs borers
nematodes and fungal diseases can be drastically reduced through crop
rotation. Tip number five - Harvesting in this tip I want to take you through a
practical example using this garden bed here of how I routinely grow sweet
potato starting from harvesting right through to refurbishing and replanting
back into the same garden bed when it comes to harvesting the tubers the first
thing I do is remove the top vine growth to a
expose the bare soil and you may already see the tops of some tubers emerging
from just below the surface giving clues as to where they have accumulated in the
garden bed using a fork and digger I systematically dig the garden bed
removing all the sweet potato tubers and the roots that I can find
depending on how compacted the bed is a garden fork might not be practical so
using a hand digger is sometimes easier and there's less chance of stabbing the
tubers but you still must be careful when digging the bed as it's easy to
accidentally damage buried tubers as I go along I separate any stringy roots
and old damaged tubers from the good tubers that we want to keep for eating
personally I prefer tubers that are under 8 inches long because we find that
anything too big can get a little bit fibrous and aren't as enjoyable to eat. I
also feel the tubers to make sure they're hard and heavy for size and
discard tubers that are light or spongy tubers selected for eating can be stored
for weeks if not months in a cool dry place. What I usually do after harvesting
is I lay these tubers out in the Sun for about half a day and it just seals off
any areas that have been broken and then they store better once I've finished
harvesting and I'm satisfied the whole bed is dug with topsoil loosened I
roughly chop up the discarded sweet potato and along with the saved roots I
spread them evenly over the bed. Some of these tubers will sprout to form new
plants and others will decay turning into fantastic worm food and nutrients
for the next crop I do the same with the old vines most of which will compost
down and enrich the bed then I liberally spread some organic fertilizer around a
good-quality blood and bone is excellent or homemade manures like chicken poo
from the coop is even better finally I've topped with some compost
and/or more garden soil and in this case I used a commercial bagged product and
then finished with a good covering of mulch like
sugarcane, lucern, leaves, or even wood chip. And that's it!
Those were my five top tips on how to grow a ton of sweet potato in one garden
bed such as that remember: Propagating, Planting, Crumbly loose soil, Pests and
disease control, and Harvesting. Do all those things right and you'll grow a ton
of sweet potato just like I can if you liked this video make sure you give it a
big fat sweet thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already and share the video
around too because that helps my channel heaps. Now, do you have any questions on
growing sweet potato or do you have any tips further tips you'd like to share
whack them down in the comment section below because I'd love to read them
thanks a lot for watching bye for now how sweet it is to finish this video in
such a windy day sweet, sweet cousie bro, that's sweet, sweet as, sweet as a nut, sweet as potato...? Uggg... :)
