Sweet Potatoes

[GREASEMONKEY]

Has anyone had sucsess growing sweet potatoes? I understand they dont grow well in this country,so any ideas ?

[Jono]

I grew some in the ground last year, and my mum grew some in a very large pot.

I put a polythene wall type thing around the the plants in the ground. They looked healthy, but didn't get very big.

Mum's were on her patio, and she watered them a lot. They grew well, and we had about 20 6 - 8 inch potatoes when we harvested.

I thought the plants themselves were very attractive.

[Jillyreeves]

Tried last year in grow bags in green house, nothing :-(

[chris]

I left mine in too small pots for too long so I had a lot of twisted ones - not that big, I think they need to be in the ground, or in large pots quite quickly so the roots don't stand a chance of getting tangled up (as it's the roots that swell into the sweet spuds).

I finished mine off in potato planter sacks in the greenhouse - they were bought in slips, quite expensive really.. I failed at getting my own supermarket ones to root.. probably won't bother again.

[Capsid]

I grew one in a bucket on a patio from a supermarket bought one last year. It made lots of leaf but ultimately it produced finger like tubers.

I think I am too far north to have a long enough growing season and suspect that a small village in north Lincolnshire is also too far north. However, my patio gets a lot of shade and I think a very sunny site in a greenhouse is what you need.

[beach_gal]

Hi,

I grew sweet potatoes for the first time in 2010. I didn't bother with 'slips' as I'd heard that they were a waste of time, and instead I bought proper plants. When they arrived they were tiny, literally a solitary 1" long leaf on each plant, but they soon grew when I put them into 6" pots on the greenhouse bench. In late may they were moved into the poly tunnel at the allotment and didn't look back. All the 'love' they got from me was a little dollop of chicken manure when they were planted, and were watered every 3 or 4 days, nothing else.

From what I'd read on the internet it seemed that I would need to wait until the foliage died back before I dug them up, but all was still green and growing by the first week of october but I needed the space so dug them up anyway: The total harvest from 10 plants (around £15 from Dobies) was 45kg, and the majority of the spuds were over 8" long and 3" diameter, with the biggest single one weighing in at 6.5lbs. I'm still munching my way through them, and they're stored in a spare bedroom with the radiator turned off, and show no signs of deteriorating 3 months out of the ground.

So don't lose heart, they will grow over here, so long as you can give them a bit of shelther.

Happy growing