Sweet Potato Harvest in Zone 5b: Everyone Can Grow a Garden (2022) #40
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ต.ค. 2022
- Garden writer Susan Mulvihill and her husband, Bill, share this year's sweet potato harvest in today's video. This is Bill's second year of growing sweet potatoes in our cold Northern climate. Learn his technique, the challenges he encountered, and see how many sweet potatoes he ended up with! From Susan's in the Garden, SusansintheGarden.com.
Susan gardens in Spokane, Wash. While most of this region is in hardiness zone 6, her garden is in a microclimate, making it zone 5b.
Susan's newest book, The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook, will be released in Feb. 2023. If you pre-order it, forward your order confirmation to Susan@SusansintheGarden.com and she will forward her bonus content called "12 Vegetable Crops You Should Add to Your Garden!" Here is a pre-order link for the book on Amazon: amzn.to/3uIMA0A. And here is additional information on the book, on Susan's website: www.susansinthegarden.com/boo....
You can order a signed copy of Susan's book, The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, directly from her by sending an email to Susan@SusansintheGarden.com. Or you can order it on Amazon: (amzn.to/3Jh6aXS). Publication date: April 2021.
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God is good. He provides, and all we have to do is be obedient. The Lord says sow the seeds and He'll do the rest. In this case plant the slips and He'll take over. Lovely Harvest. Thanks for sharing and God bless you both and your family.
We finally meet the greenhouse pepper expert! Nice to meet you Mr. Bill! Great harvest guys!!!
Hi Bill!! So nice to see you!!
Good job Bill, thanks for showing us.
Yay, that was fun to see what Bill uncovered. Have a great day!
Glad you enjoyed it, Diane!
Wow~ Wonderful Gardening ^^
Include Like 193 , I leave 3 Presents.
Have a good relationship.
My friend, always stay Connected.
It was great to meet your sweetheart, Bill, and hear him talk about how and why he started growing sweet potatoes. That was a fairly decent harvest for only having a few slips. I grew mine in 20-gallon grow bags (in 2021) which seemed to work quite well. I filled them with a raised bed mix that I purchased by the bag. I loved how easy it was to harvest them from the grow bags by just dumping the bags onto a tarp. Unfortunately, I didn't save any of the potatoes (they tasted so good) for starting slips this season, so I'll try again next year. I hope you two have a great weekend! ~Margie🤗🍠
Thanks, Margie! You, too. I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Wow, it’s like Christmas 😂❤
Ha ha!
thank you
Good Job Bill! Love couples projects. My husband helps me with my sweet potatoes too because the containers are heavy to dump and you don't want to break any. I am in Western NY zone 5b and plant 4 slips per 25 gal grow bag outdoors in a warmer spot. They like loose soil and a lot of water. I use Mahon Yam from Johnny's and because the slips have gotten so pricey I make sure to keep some for starting slips the following year. I heat cure them before storage and they will store thru TWO winters for me! (If I don't eat them up! ) This year I got a lot of gorgeous, big tubers. They have become one of my favorite crops.
That's impressive!
That was fun to watch. More Bill please! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I'll have to see if I can talk him into it, Joe! (or maybe you'll have better luck?)
I like the idea of using the pots. It’s so difficult when they’re in beds. I did find out that sweet potatoes don’t really love great soil. They like less nitrogen. They like more calcium and phosphorus to get bigger roots
That is true.
I'm a transplant from Spokane down near Salem Oregon. Our Summer is very similar to yours, but usually with cooler lows at night, so our soil temperature needs a little help to get a great sweet potato harvest. I made my first attempt last year, and we got about 35 lbs from probably 18 or 20 slips. Most of them were about a couple inches thick or less, but the rewlly nice ones came from a small bed that was close to the south face of our house, right next to a black 55gal water barrel, where our on ground citrus trees live. The soil was definitely the hottest there. We probably got 6 lbs from two slips there. I'm going to try covering strips of soil with clear plastic this year, and plant into slits every foot or so. I also bought some 15gal black fabric pots, which I hope will do as well as your pots did! I have already planted a few slips around a tomato plant and a few around a pepper plant, both in the greenhouse for now until summer comes in full swing. I might add a few inches of wood chips on top to help retain moisture. Fingers crossed this year!
Hi, Joshua. It sounds like they really liked that extra heat! I hope your sweet potatoes do great this summer.
I would comment too that was a inspiration, I appreciate sharing the experience-sweet potatoes with tomatoes! Love ❤ it!
Thanks! It's a bit of an experiment at this point, but I've seen some other folks interplanting like this so I'm trying it out. I'm guessing it'll probably take some extra nutrients to keep it all going, but I've also heard that sweet potatoes actually produce better when it's not super fertile soil too. So my hope is that the tomatoes and peppers will gobble up the excess nutrients, to inspire better production in the sweet potatoes. If I see either plant languishing, then I'll give them a quick dose of liquid fertilizer or compost tea to right the ship.
Nice harvest! I haven’t tried growing them since moving back home to Spokane from S. Florida. Seeing your success I’ll give it a try next year. Thanks!
I loved this. I live close to Colville and I also planted slips in my greenhouse bed. I got 20 sweet potatoes but mostly long and skinny. This next year I am going to do them in big grow bags, maybe a kiddy pool but outdoors. They were very hard to get out of my soil. Thanks Bill!👍🏼💜
Thanks for a great video!😁
Glad you liked it!
Sweet potatoes are so delicious and good for you. Nice little harvest.
Good job Jim.
Bill, really enjoyed the story of how you tried sweet potatoes for the first time. I made carrot
soup once and added a sweet potato instead of a white potato for thickening and really liked the extra flavor. I wonder how the sweet potatoes keep vs your other potatoes.
Hi, Marilyn. The sweet potatoes from last year stayed good through June/July. We were very impressed.
Last year I grew Georgia jet and Beauregard potatoes in 18 gallon totes in 5B Upper Michigan and did quite well. I think they split due to inconsistent or over watering. Looks like you did well.
That was going to be my guess, too. Thanks!
I tried sweet potatoes for the first time this year in Pullman, WA. I believe we’re in 6B. I did mine in straw bales from slips I bought from Baker Creek. I originally had slips from Gurneys but they didn’t make it after the cold, wet, spring. I think I’ll try the Ruth Stout method next year. I’ve heard Covington is a good variety for colder climates like ours.
Nice to meet you, Michelle!
Great video. Love seeing Bill. Maybe next year he will do some videos on growing peppers.
Yes, I will see if I can convince him, LOL! (he prefers to be behind the camera but is an amazing pepper grower)
Susan & Bill, nice sweet potatoes, if you can find some purple flesh sweet potatoes they are in my opinion the best tasting. I grow the white flesh, orange flesh and the purple flesh. I’ll start harvesting some of mine in a couple of weeks, so they will have time to cure for Thanksgiving. I’m in coastal Southern California so very little chance of frost her ever.
Always look forward to seeing your videos.
Hi, Darry. That sounds intriguing. We'll look for some. Thank you.
Try growing them in one of the beds with trellis to grow up. I think the roots need more room. I planted 6 slips in a 4x8 area this year and had a huge harvest in 5a. I planted in mid May and harvested in early Oct the night before a frost. I did nothing special to the bed just planted and then left them alone.
Wow, that sounds great, good for you. Quick question, could you please share what medium you grew in and which fertilizers if any. Did you water etc. thanks
@@sharonloves 100% compost (beds are 4 years old)
Great to see Bill! Do you know you can eat sweet potato leaves? In Taiwan we stir fry them
I didn't know that. Thank you.
I enjoyed your video. I currently live in Nebraska zone 5a. But I am from Othello Washington. One year in Othello I tried to grow sweet potatoes. I planted my sweets in a long row of soil that was above ground about 6 inches, and a foot wide. The soil below was well tilled. After planting, I had soaker hoses on each side. I then covered the entire row with black plastic to increase soil temp. It worked okay. Alot of sweets but they weren't very big. I think I needed a longer growing season. I really enjoyed trying to grow them.
I heard that they don't like normal garden soil, they grow big in soil or soil/mix that won't compact at all and remains loose. I'm not sure myself since this is my first year trying, but the vine look great at least.
Congratulations you 2! I'm envious ;) since I had over the summer the compagnie of a groundhog :(. She enjoyed the leaves. All I had, was those french fries! I cannot wait to receive your 2nd book! Bon appetit!
PS : maybe you can share your receipe?
Sorry to hear that, it's frustrating when you have to deal with critters. Are you asking about the recipe Bill mentioned in the video?
@@SusansInTheGarden yes please, if you dont mind?
@@carollem5580 Not at all. This is the recipe: www.marthastewart.com/1050349/potato-and-sweet-potato-tian. Enjoy!
This is great! How many gallons are the containers you use?
I think they're about 15 gallons each.
I notice the shade cloth on your greenhouse. Do you have a thermometer in there to see how hot it gets? I have been meaning to buy cloth so I can use my greenhouse during the summer but I worry it will still be too hot to pretty much anything but the few crops that can take really extreme heat. I am in the same area as you so it would be interesting to know the difference it makes during our really hot weeks.
Hi there. The shade cloth is on the south side of the greenhouse because it just gets so bright in there, which is hard on young seedlings in the spring. We do have an automatic vent opener plus the door has both a glass window and a window screen, but even so, during the peak summer, it probably gets a bit over 100 degrees F. We don't really use it much during the summer months and Bill has decided he won't have to grow next year's sweet potato crop inside it!
I'm located in Europe, that's zone 5b or 6 I guess. I got good results growing them outdoors (that's not orange variety though). 2 days ago, almost all leaves have been destroyed by light frost. No more frost is expected again anytime soon though, so there's no risk ground will freeze. How do you think, can I leave them not harvested a bit longer until ground freezes? I think that may be even 1 month until soil freeze. I'm getting big trouble to store harvested tubers, after max 2 weeks they become soft and finally decay. I wonder if that's possible to letting them not harvested will work better?
Hello, John. It's nice to meet you. How are you storing your sweet potato tubers? We do not wash the soil of ours after harvesting them (you can just gently brush off any soil once it has dried a bit), then we place them in a box and store them in our basement, which is dark and cool (about 50 degrees F. (10 C.) and they stayed in perfect condition for close to a year. As far as when to harvest them goes, we are still novices at growing sweet potatoes but it is my understanding that you need to harvest them before they get frosted. I realize you said they already did get frosted so I would go ahead and harvest them now. I hope this helps!
@@SusansInTheGarden Hello, thanks for sharing your experience. Good to see I'm not alone with sweet potato grow in cold climate zone 🙂 Yes, the've been frosted, but leaves only. Last year I put tubers in cool and dark place (below 20 °C, I guess that was 15 or even lower) and after 2 weeks I found them soft and withered. That's really frustrating. I have no idea why, maybe better ventilation required? One month later, I found some tubers when plowing my garden and they were still fresh in perfect condition. So I wonder, maybe it's better to do nothing until strong frost expected (strong enough to freeze ground with tubers).
What size pots did you use?
Hi, Janet. I would say they are 10 gallon pots.
Thank you. I think I will try growing them next year but I’ll have to start the slips early. I’ve never had much luck with slips.
@@JanetOrt Hi again. I wanted to add that the pots were possibly 15 gallon size, they were just left over from when we bought some trees quite a few years ago.
@@SusansInTheGarden ok thank you. I might have a couple of those. But I can always buy some used ones at the nursery too. I seem to always manage to use a pot that’s too small once the plant starts growing.
Your soil is too good. You will get more with substandard dirt.