Where I work in Gloucestershire, UK we tried sweet potatoes this year. We had them in a large glasshouse. We also have the dilemma of crop value vs space used in the premium indoor growing areas. Beds are full to the brim from autumn through to the spring but we currently grow enough summer crops such as tomatoes, peppers etc. to fulfil our needs without using all the inside beds. We plant an early courgette crop inside after spinach or spring greens in April and we hold on to that crop until the outdoor courgette crop starts to produce consistently. Outdoor courgettes are planted around the end of May. So, depending on the year we are having weatherwise, we may not be producing well outside till sometime in July. By then it is not really worth planting a summer crop where the indoor courgettes were. So we planted our sweet potato slips between the indoor courgettes. We did this at the beginning of May. Our courgettes are 80cm apart if I'm remembering correctly but it may be more. Therefore our sweet potatoes were also along the row at 80cm. When the outdoor courgette crop is underway we cut out and remove the courgettes leaving just the sweet potatoes. I'd read they wanted full sun to partial shade but really I feel full sun is the way to go. We got a reasonable crop of sweet potatoes with little effort. I believe getting them in at the right time is important. Whilst the courgettes are present the sweet potatoes are establishing and just generally settling in. They are shaded but they trail to find the light which most crops can't do and, regardless, by the time the sweet potatoes want to go for it we remove the shade and competition and they get free reign. Sprawling over the beds. Our yield per a plant ranged greatly but that is probably down to the overall history of the grow space rather than anything else. Propagation and planting took very little time compared to other crops and the watering is already in position. Not too many crops want the intense heat of midday summer, so we see it as a crop from a space we may not have used at that time and for little effort. Maybe we could do grow more basil or something else instead but everything must be balanced against demand and time. The variety we used was beauregard. It's just one year and a shit cloudy one at that but hopefully this will continue to work and as we move with rotation the continuing improvements to the soil will hopefully improve consistency and yield.
That is really interesting. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Intercropping or relay cropping may be a very useful way to go with these. I wonder if a large grow bag placed between the courgettes for the sweet potatoes, might elevate the young plants int the light some more and boost the yield? But as you say, it is a crop that produces something with very little extra work, especially at a busy time of the year.
I watch a wide variety of gardening channels and whenever they grow sweet potatoes, and everything goes well, the sweet potatoes really give them their bang for their buck. They're on my list of plants to grow here in zone 7b.
I use grow bags exclusively for sweet potatoes. Instead of putting the slips in a little pot try just leaving them in a vase of water. It keeps them from getting tangled. The little skinny potatoes are good as dog treats. Thanks for all the hard work that goes into these videos.👍🏼😁
"...big enough to keep..." HAH! my harvest was so poor that I kept them as small as 1/4" inch. Actually, done in the air fryer, they make a nice little snack. Every time I try to grow sweet potatoes, I swear I'll never do it again. Thennnn, I watch a video like this, and I get sucked back in. They are delicious, nutritious, keep very well, and I can grow my own from last year's crop. I REALLY want to make them work. So, I'll probably give it another go this coming year. Thanks for the inspiration.
A friend had such hard clay that his 1st sweet potato crop looked like a harvest of blood red arteries. He sent me pics. It was a true horror. I told him to cover it up, let it decompose & plant a winter kill cover crop to try & bust that clay. He finally got something resembling sweet potatoes on year 3. Fortunately, he's retired. His grudge match with his clay soil is an on-going love/hate relationship/hobby.
@@flatsville9343 Hard clay isn't my problem. I have pretty good, sand-based soil, which I have built up to very good soil. I guess I'm just searching for the right situation, The few decent sized SPs that I grew last year were in a container, so I'm going to work with that this coming year.
We grow lots around here. I haven't grown them in two years. I'm getting ground hogs under control for now. From what I remember this is a crop that is fine with low fertility. Counterintuitive but If I remember correctly I only lightly fertilized at planting and had no problem with yields. The mid size ones with good shape are considered choice. Small strings can be used for "fries". Big ones people usually feed to animals. Around here this is one of the few "set and forget" crops if you need to. And in poor soil. Hope that helps from US.
Not sure if I missed it but I didn't hear you mention the delicious leaves that sweet potato produces. Its part of your crop and also adds to your compost at harvest time. I grow sweet potato for the leaves. The roots are just a bonus for me. The chickens love the leaves too.
Sweet potato greens are one of the best vegetables I can get in the winter. Since they rely in the tuber far more than photosynthesis, they do well indoors
@@someoneucantknow7756 Too rich maybe. They have higher amounts of potassium. I only give the chickens a few but they are not pigs about it either...got jokes. Sorry about that.
It's all about heat for sure, a large hot compost pile with cheap hose looped through it to heat irrigation water works wonders and can be placed adjacent to the poly tunnel so as to not use valuable growing space. Plus if you're sticking to grow bags try and get them off the ground even if its just sat on wood chips or dry leaves conduction robs much more heat than convection.
That’s an interesting idea. The issue about raising them off the ground is it might make it harder for the roots to reach the soil below. I wonder what’s more important reducing conduction or facilitating root access.
@@REDGardens In my experience they are light feeders, all they need is adequate warmth. I've grown them hanging from poly tunnel rafters in the black fabric grow bags and had very good yields, no access to the ground whatsoever.
@ I think the bags are a mix of 20L and 30L but any pot hung in a sturdy net would be fine, just remember to put something like a washing line prop or pole of some sort under the cross beams that you hang them from just to be on the safe side. Growth medium is always composted Autumn leaves, even unamended its plenty for sweet potatoes, honestly once the heat issue is sorted they all crop well, iv'e grown store bought, purple, white, etc. The overall best ever yield came from a cultivar called 'Evangeline' massive harvest but too sweet for me personally.
In Estonia, there are small scale industrial growing experiments going on to grow sweet potatoes on fields. They are doing reasonably well when grown as cucumber on open fields - with black plastic sheet mulch and drip irrigation. There is ca 4 months (beginning of June to end of September) when they grow (and they do especially well during now much more common heatwaves in the summer). But as typically, besides correct agricultural practices, number 1 is the selection of varieties. Estonian agricultural university has found that European varieties (developed e.g. in Germany etc) are doing much better compared to Asian ones. US varieties have done in some, but not in all years. During the tests, e.g. 'Erato Early Orange' has shown great yields. There has been quite a bit of research done on that topic, but I suspect that most of the information is in Estonian...
That is so cool they are doing proper research into a crop like that. I don’t know if there is any comparable exploration into any vegetable here in Ireland. Seems to be only beef and milk and other meat.
@@REDGardens Farmers have complained, that things become more and more lottery with ordinary potatoes, we tend to have more often and more severe droughts and heatwaves. Apparently potatoes are more sensitive to such weather.
I do this it works...and you can stir-fry the yummy picked sweet potatoes leaves. I harvest 25% of the leaves about once a week during the prime leaf-out period. Do you do it more or less frequently? I have not tested a more frequent harvest for fear of diminishing returns below ground.
Vines can be trained up on trellises to save ground room, but they don't cling - they have to be tied off. The only problem is that they will shade out other valuable garden space if you don't position then where they don't cast shade.
I usually do that to save space. I have never had to tie them off. I use nylon trellis netting and the vines can simply be twisted around the vertical strands. There are sweet potatoes that will climb, but the trait has mostly been bred out of them because it's not a desirable feature for commercial production.
Great video Bruce. I gave up sweet potatoes after moving to Oregon with our cool weather, but I'm going to try the grow bag in a tunnel approach this summer.
We've been growing them here in Oregon the past couple years! Need Salem, we get a pretty nice warm season, and we were able to get about 45 lbs last year from about 25 plants. I think we would have gotten a lot more, but I got impatient and pulled them out before the end of October. It turned out we had almost another month before the soil got too cold for them. It's definitely worth it, especially for the spinach like greens during a season when spinach bolts immediately!
Amazing results Bruce, has given me hope that if I try again I will also get worthwhile results using that potted up method. Surprisingly I’ve found a supplier here (wholesale) and my thought is if they are selling wholesale varieties of sweet potato who is growing them in the EU and where are they being sold (retail)? The grower of the slips is Volmary which you may have heard of. Anyway like you I’m looking forward to this year for a number of reasons and now inc growing sweet potatoes. Thanks as always.
This might be way too much work, but could you bury a loop of irrigation tubing half in the soil and half out and circulate water inside of it to warm up the soil? You can run the circulation pump during the day time when the polytunnel is very warm and leave it off at night to not cool the soil.
I grow sweet potatoes in florida, and I do think the cardboard was a mistake. We plant the shoots in a relatively fertile patch of good soil but allow the vines to spread in each direction into less fertile, sandy soil. We mainly water and feed ground zero and find that the vines root into the sandy soil half way through the growing season and grow the best potatoes there. We live in Florida though so your mileage may vary.
Congrats man, growing sweet potatoes in Ireland is cutting edge…. It isn’t the ideal climate, but yes greenhouse growing can mitigate some of the bad factors. I grew them once in Southern Ontario, 2022, and did OK about 10 lbs in a 75L tote like your bigger yielders bags. I’m in Southern Ontario though, long hot summers. Easy to propagate though, I just used the supermarket variety for slips too,,,
Thanks! The polytunnels are so much better here for a lot of the heat loving crops, but until I dug out those sweet potatoes from the grow bags, I hadn’t really taken the lower temperature of the soil itself into consideration. I think it could really help some of the more problematic crops.
That’s interesting, I followed the advice of somebody who seemed to know what they were talking about, but I’m not sure if it works in this climate. Or at least it needs to be much warmer before they start to decompose.
Do they need more heat than standard potatoes? Sweet potato fries are pretty good and pie is popular but they remind me a lot of carrots. If they grow better than carrots you'd have a winner.
the praise of the light weight grow bag material makes me think of how these are traditionally grown in sand. that seems like a lighter well drained soil. too. Any thoughts on last years crop adapting to your climate? interested to see if they keep improving year afer year, since these are propogated and not going to seed.
Yeah, they seem to enjoy lighter conditions in the soil. Not sure if there’s any chance of any adaptation, I think the key to this crop will always be ensuring more warmth.
I wanted to try growing sweet potatoes last season too, but I had trouble getting the plants from store bought "tubers". They just kept rotting and when I finally managed to get one to root and sprout, I somehow managed to forget about the transplanted plants and let them dry out. It was late in the season anyway, but I was hoping to at least get an idea about how the plants would grow, even if they didn't manage to produce much.
Hope next year is better for you. I agree that it can be valuable to just see how things grow, even if they are not successful, at least for the first season.
Here are some suggestions: Make sure you get an organic sweet potato to start with so you can have as much assurance as possible that it hasn't been sprayed with a sprouting inhibitor. Get your potato a few months in advance of needing it, and rather than planting it, just leave it out in a warm place. It should eventually send out shoots on its own. Once these grow to 5-10cm, you can pot them up. If slips form earlier than expected, you can simply grow it as a houseplant in a brightly lit place and take stem cuttings (root in water) for planting in the garden.
@ Thanks for the tips. I've heard about the spraying they might do, unfortunately I haven't seen organic ones as on option anywhere here, I should probably look around more. Or at least I might try letting it start growing on its own, I am just too impatient to wait for "eventually". :D
From growing them in north Florida, I'm surprised you can do anything with them in Ireland. We plant at the beginning of June when the rains start. Generally, 90*F hi/75*F lo /60 to 100% humidity. It's a hot, wet, sticky time of year. We are growing in sand. We put the balanced fertilizer to them when they start vining and then use something higher in potassium a month or so later. They do not require much more than that. Which is good, because that time of year, it is unbearable to work outside. We harvest in late November or early December when the vines die. I find curing requirements overstated. We stack up crates full of sweet potatoes right beside the field and cover them with black cloth. They are ready to go in two weeks. My only real pest issue with sweet potatoes is deer coming through and grazing them to bare vines, which just sets them back.
Last year I started in mid February, but I think that was too early, so don’t really know when is best to start. I’m planning to start them in mid March this year.
When you determine the "bang for the buck" for growing different plants in the poly tunnels, is it just the Kg/M^2 or do you factor in calories, protein, etc.?
Usually only kg/m2. With protein and calories I would need to rely on industrial average values, rather than anything specific to what I actually grow. I think that many crops can have hugely different protein levels depending on the growing conditions, potatoes is a significant example. Also, in the past I have focused more on filling people’s plates with vegetables, assuming people have limited space. figuring there were better or easier sources for food higher in calories and protein that people can get from elsewhere.
Useful to know! I had pretty good success from a DIY low caterpillar tunnel outside in southern Norway, made from hoops and transparent plastic sheeting (from construction). I think I'll repeat that this year, but adding a black MyPex style ground cover over a compost mulch. So still growing in the ground, but trying to catch as much warmth as possible. I have heard other growers report that growbags give better yields than growing in the ground. What size growbag would you recommend?
Apparently a clear plastic is better at warming the soil, as it lets the sun in and traps the warmth. With the black fabric it heats up but most of the rest is radiated into the air above. Something to perhaps explore. Good luck with the crop!
Wow! Your audio sounds quite different in this video. Great lighting! One thing I plan to focus on in 2025 is better trellising, and that includes for sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes love to sprawl, and as you noted, the vines rooting at leaf nodes may be an issue. (Though sweet potato leaves and vines are delicious for those of us with healthy kidneys.) I intend to grow them along a bit of a "hut," a squat A-frame of canes and straight branches I collected in 2024. A simple netting might help keep those vines off the soil without needing covers that may keep the soil too cool early in the season. With the straw/hay bale planting methods, that seems to take much more run-up time & resources to get the interior well-rotted and reasonably saturated with nutrients from added fertilizer before planting. The method isn't very economical for where I am, so my familiarity ends with a couple lackluster experiments. Your videos are getting me psyched to return to the garden again this coming season, despite a couple rough years of failure here.
Thanks. Not sure about the audio in this one, it is clearer, but fair amount oof echo in the room. I do like the lighting better, have invested in better lights, and reflector. Now I just need to finish painting the room and hang something on the wall.
@@REDGardens Maybe a low tunnel outside then. I make them from blue alkathene water pipe & the polythene covers off new mattresses (I get the polythene off a local furniture store for free as it saves them the cost of disposal).
What month do you start the slips? also did you grow 'Covington'? I heard it may grow better here. The channel Deep South Homestead has tonnes of very good sweet potato videos including several videos on producing the slips. Different climate but relevant info contained in the videos.
Thanks for the recommendation. I started them in late February last year, but think that was too early. The only variety I know is the ‘Orleans’, which seems to be the only variety available in Ireland. The other varieties were whatever could be bought from the supermarket, so have no idea.
@@REDGardens Supermarket sweet potato varieties will be named on the bag, I got covington & beauregard from tesco. In lidl, the loose sweet potatoes; variety will be named on the side of the box. Both varieties above are very common & may even be one of the ones you grew. Keep a close look at the supermarket ones label / packet, they are often named.
I planted three varieties in the front yard under my fruit trees as ground cover around 5 years ago. I never had to plant them again, literally can’t eat them all. I’m in a much warmer climate than you tho, Texas is hot lol
Aren't you in Zone 8 or 9 there? I'm in zone 9'ish but don't use a polytunnel. Just grow the slips indoors until they can survive outdoors. My current issue for sweet potato is the hard clay soil in my current place that I'm slowly improving. Nice video. Cheers!
I don't know the zone here, not really a thing in Ireland. Our issue isn't so much how hard or cold the winters are, which I think is what the what the zone system is based on. Even though our winters are relatively warm, possibly equivalent to a zone 8 or 9, the cool summers are the problem with growing crops like this. We tend to get only a few days when the temperature gets above 20ºC in the summer.
I didn't grow sweet potatoes last year. The year before I had multiple individual roots weighing more than 2kg each with most plants producing over 3 kg. They don't really get woody when they get that big, so no issues there though that's definitely not a "baking potato". Shallow soil temperatures here reach around 30C at the height of summer. Sweet potatoes rival maize and wheat for calories produced in a given area, and far outproduce white potatoes. Those don't like the short spring and hot summers my continental temperate climate provides. If you're concerned about the plants being pot bound and producing twisted roots as a result, just cut the plants off at the top of the growing medium and re-root in water. Sweet potatoes are among the easiest plants to propagate from stem cuttings, and you'll likely have them all in the ground within a week on a fresh set of roots. You probably got about the best yield you could get from your grow bags, but if you try larger bags at some point, consider either manually trellising the vines or giving them space to spread out. Most varieties I have experience with concentrate production on the initial roots at the point of planting, so at least for me having lots of tiny roots form along the vines at the expense of the main crop has never been a big deal. You should really press your luck and try okra sometime!
Yeah, they can be really hard to find, at least here in Ireland. I ended up finding a source in Deker horticulture, I’m not sure if anyone else supplies them.
How I grew sweet potatoes like an idiot: 1. Buy organic sweet potatoes from the store. 2. Root them in damp woodchips to produce slips. 3. Plant the slips in amended, well-draining soil. 4. Carefully monitor the plants throughout the season. 5. Completely forget to harvest the sweet potatoes at the end of autumn. 6. Dig up ruined, inedible tubers several weeks after the frost.
I thought this was great content, highly relevant to me. I went to your donate page and saw you described yourself as He/him. I have no time for woke nonsense so I won't be donating. I thought you were down to the earth, a sensible human, seems I was mistaken.
Woke nonsense? Sorry for triggering you! Sounds like you really need to meet more people. Most of the really sensible and down to earth people I know are ‘woke’. Kind of a key characteristic, I find, is to be able to have empathy for other people, and not easily convinced to hate those who are different. Thanks for the thought at least.
Where I work in Gloucestershire, UK we tried sweet potatoes this year. We had them in a large glasshouse. We also have the dilemma of crop value vs space used in the premium indoor growing areas. Beds are full to the brim from autumn through to the spring but we currently grow enough summer crops such as tomatoes, peppers etc. to fulfil our needs without using all the inside beds. We plant an early courgette crop inside after spinach or spring greens in April and we hold on to that crop until the outdoor courgette crop starts to produce consistently. Outdoor courgettes are planted around the end of May. So, depending on the year we are having weatherwise, we may not be producing well outside till sometime in July. By then it is not really worth planting a summer crop where the indoor courgettes were. So we planted our sweet potato slips between the indoor courgettes. We did this at the beginning of May. Our courgettes are 80cm apart if I'm remembering correctly but it may be more. Therefore our sweet potatoes were also along the row at 80cm. When the outdoor courgette crop is underway we cut out and remove the courgettes leaving just the sweet potatoes. I'd read they wanted full sun to partial shade but really I feel full sun is the way to go. We got a reasonable crop of sweet potatoes with little effort. I believe getting them in at the right time is important. Whilst the courgettes are present the sweet potatoes are establishing and just generally settling in. They are shaded but they trail to find the light which most crops can't do and, regardless, by the time the sweet potatoes want to go for it we remove the shade and competition and they get free reign. Sprawling over the beds.
Our yield per a plant ranged greatly but that is probably down to the overall history of the grow space rather than anything else. Propagation and planting took very little time compared to other crops and the watering is already in position. Not too many crops want the intense heat of midday summer, so we see it as a crop from a space we may not have used at that time and for little effort. Maybe we could do grow more basil or something else instead but everything must be balanced against demand and time. The variety we used was beauregard.
It's just one year and a shit cloudy one at that but hopefully this will continue to work and as we move with rotation the continuing improvements to the soil will hopefully improve consistency and yield.
That is really interesting. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Intercropping or relay cropping may be a very useful way to go with these. I wonder if a large grow bag placed between the courgettes for the sweet potatoes, might elevate the young plants int the light some more and boost the yield? But as you say, it is a crop that produces something with very little extra work, especially at a busy time of the year.
I also grow sweet potatoes in growbags. Topping up the bags with compost at the beginning of august helps to increase the yield.
Thanks for the tip!
That's great info!
I watch a wide variety of gardening channels and whenever they grow sweet potatoes, and everything goes well, the sweet potatoes really give them their bang for their buck. They're on my list of plants to grow here in zone 7b.
Yeah, they seem to do that, either really good or almost not worth it.
I use grow bags exclusively for sweet potatoes. Instead of putting the slips in a little pot try just leaving them in a vase of water. It keeps them from getting tangled. The little skinny potatoes are good as dog treats. Thanks for all the hard work that goes into these videos.👍🏼😁
Thanks for the tip.
"...big enough to keep..." HAH! my harvest was so poor that I kept them as small as 1/4" inch. Actually, done in the air fryer, they make a nice little snack. Every time I try to grow sweet potatoes, I swear I'll never do it again. Thennnn, I watch a video like this, and I get sucked back in. They are delicious, nutritious, keep very well, and I can grow my own from last year's crop. I REALLY want to make them work. So, I'll probably give it another go this coming year. Thanks for the inspiration.
I should have kept those small ones, should try the in an air fryer.
I feel the same way...and had the same poor harvest....I said I wouldn't do it yet again..but then watched this video :)
A friend had such hard clay that his 1st sweet potato crop looked like a harvest of blood red arteries. He sent me pics. It was a true horror. I told him to cover it up, let it decompose & plant a winter kill cover crop to try & bust that clay. He finally got something resembling sweet potatoes on year 3.
Fortunately, he's retired. His grudge match with his clay soil is an on-going love/hate relationship/hobby.
@@flatsville9343
Hard clay isn't my problem. I have pretty good, sand-based soil, which I have built up to very good soil. I guess I'm just searching for the right situation, The few decent sized SPs that I grew last year were in a container, so I'm going to work with that this coming year.
You can also eat the greens like cooked spinach throughout the season. Quite common in Asian cuisine and very nutritious.
I need to try those this year!
@@jimdennis9328 yeah they’re not bad, I do recommend cooking well though, a bit tough. They can be animal feed too.
Your content always delivers, grateful
😁
We grow lots around here. I haven't grown them in two years. I'm getting ground hogs under control for now. From what I remember this is a crop that is fine with low fertility. Counterintuitive but If I remember correctly I only lightly fertilized at planting and had no problem with yields. The mid size ones with good shape are considered choice. Small strings can be used for "fries". Big ones people usually feed to animals. Around here this is one of the few "set and forget" crops if you need to. And in poor soil. Hope that helps from US.
I have heard that low fertility is better, something I want to explore.
Not sure if I missed it but I didn't hear you mention the delicious leaves that sweet potato produces. Its part of your crop and also adds to your compost at harvest time. I grow sweet potato for the leaves. The roots are just a bonus for me. The chickens love the leaves too.
yup!
We fed sweet potato leaves/vines to our pigs and it messed them
up for a couple days.
Yeah, I didn’t mention that, and have yet to sample them! I must try them this year.
Sweet potato greens are one of the best vegetables I can get in the winter. Since they rely in the tuber far more than photosynthesis, they do well indoors
@@someoneucantknow7756 Too rich maybe. They have higher amounts of potassium. I only give the chickens a few but they are not pigs about it either...got jokes. Sorry about that.
It's all about heat for sure, a large hot compost pile with cheap hose looped through it to heat irrigation water works wonders and can be placed adjacent to the poly tunnel so as to not use valuable growing space. Plus if you're sticking to grow bags try and get them off the ground even if its just sat on wood chips or dry leaves conduction robs much more heat than convection.
That’s an interesting idea. The issue about raising them off the ground is it might make it harder for the roots to reach the soil below. I wonder what’s more important reducing conduction or facilitating root access.
@@REDGardens In my experience they are light feeders, all they need is adequate warmth. I've grown them hanging from poly tunnel rafters in the black fabric grow bags and had very good yields, no access to the ground whatsoever.
@@JohnDoe-ib3hrWhat size bags do you use? What growing medium? Do you have a specific variety?
@ I think the bags are a mix of 20L and 30L but any pot hung in a sturdy net would be fine, just remember to put something like a washing line prop or pole of some sort under the cross beams that you hang them from just to be on the safe side.
Growth medium is always composted Autumn leaves, even unamended its plenty for sweet potatoes, honestly once the heat issue is sorted they all crop well, iv'e grown store bought, purple, white, etc. The overall best ever yield came from a cultivar called 'Evangeline' massive harvest but too sweet for me personally.
In Estonia, there are small scale industrial growing experiments going on to grow sweet potatoes on fields. They are doing reasonably well when grown as cucumber on open fields - with black plastic sheet mulch and drip irrigation. There is ca 4 months (beginning of June to end of September) when they grow (and they do especially well during now much more common heatwaves in the summer). But as typically, besides correct agricultural practices, number 1 is the selection of varieties. Estonian agricultural university has found that European varieties (developed e.g. in Germany etc) are doing much better compared to Asian ones. US varieties have done in some, but not in all years. During the tests, e.g. 'Erato Early Orange' has shown great yields.
There has been quite a bit of research done on that topic, but I suspect that most of the information is in Estonian...
That is so cool they are doing proper research into a crop like that. I don’t know if there is any comparable exploration into any vegetable here in Ireland. Seems to be only beef and milk and other meat.
@@REDGardens Farmers have complained, that things become more and more lottery with ordinary potatoes, we tend to have more often and more severe droughts and heatwaves. Apparently potatoes are more sensitive to such weather.
This was very interesting. Thank you! 💚
Love this kind of work. Just a potential tip. Studies have shown that cutting 25% (but not 50%) of sweet potato foilage increases root mass yield
That is interesting, something to try this year!
I do this it works...and you can stir-fry the yummy picked sweet potatoes leaves. I harvest 25% of the leaves about once a week during the prime leaf-out period.
Do you do it more or less frequently?
I have not tested a more frequent harvest for fear of diminishing returns below ground.
Would be interesting if you put a couple of growbags outside between the polytunnels for comparison.
Yeah, that would be interesting. I’ll try to fit that in this year.
After a long time..nice to see you sir...
😁
Vines can be trained up on trellises to save ground room, but they don't cling - they have to be tied off. The only problem is that they will shade out other valuable garden space if you don't position then where they don't cast shade.
I usually do that to save space. I have never had to tie them off. I use nylon trellis netting and the vines can simply be twisted around the vertical strands. There are sweet potatoes that will climb, but the trait has mostly been bred out of them because it's not a desirable feature for commercial production.
The sounds like something to try. Around here I think prioritising the sun for other crops might be a better option.
Great video Bruce. I gave up sweet potatoes after moving to Oregon with our cool weather, but I'm going to try the grow bag in a tunnel approach this summer.
Thanks! Hope it works for you.
We've been growing them here in Oregon the past couple years! Need Salem, we get a pretty nice warm season, and we were able to get about 45 lbs last year from about 25 plants. I think we would have gotten a lot more, but I got impatient and pulled them out before the end of October. It turned out we had almost another month before the soil got too cold for them. It's definitely worth it, especially for the spinach like greens during a season when spinach bolts immediately!
Good work 👍⚘️☘️🌾🫑
😁
Thanks. I now know what i am going to grow in my 35 litre pots in polytunnel.
Best of luck!
Wow! Great crop from the grow bags! My African house-mate ate the sweet potato leaves; there's recipes online.
I want to try them next year!
Amazing results Bruce, has given me hope that if I try again I will also get worthwhile results using that potted up method. Surprisingly I’ve found a supplier here (wholesale) and my thought is if they are selling wholesale varieties of sweet potato who is growing them in the EU and where are they being sold (retail)? The grower of the slips is Volmary which you may have heard of. Anyway like you I’m looking forward to this year for a number of reasons and now inc growing sweet potatoes. Thanks as always.
Coll that you found a supplier there. Hope they grow well for you!
I've never thought of growing sweet potatoes. I have a greenhouse, so perhaps I should! Very impressive crops 😮
😁
can't wait to turn some backyard/frontyard into a greenhouse, i miss it
Hope you can get one soon!
This might be way too much work, but could you bury a loop of irrigation tubing half in the soil and half out and circulate water inside of it to warm up the soil? You can run the circulation pump during the day time when the polytunnel is very warm and leave it off at night to not cool the soil.
Thank you. I hadn't even thought to grow sweet potatoes.
Birdy
😁
I grow sweet potatoes in florida, and I do think the cardboard was a mistake. We plant the shoots in a relatively fertile patch of good soil but allow the vines to spread in each direction into less fertile, sandy soil. We mainly water and feed ground zero and find that the vines root into the sandy soil half way through the growing season and grow the best potatoes there. We live in Florida though so your mileage may vary.
I also had much higher yield in large black plastic pots than in the ground.
I'll be growing them in pots only this year.
Congrats man, growing sweet potatoes in Ireland is cutting edge…. It isn’t the ideal climate, but yes greenhouse growing can mitigate some of the bad factors. I grew them once in Southern Ontario, 2022, and did OK about 10 lbs in a 75L tote like your bigger yielders bags. I’m in Southern Ontario though, long hot summers. Easy to propagate though, I just used the supermarket variety for slips too,,,
Thanks! The polytunnels are so much better here for a lot of the heat loving crops, but until I dug out those sweet potatoes from the grow bags, I hadn’t really taken the lower temperature of the soil itself into consideration. I think it could really help some of the more problematic crops.
I've seen that the straw bales shoud have the cut end up when you apply the nitogen and maybe they should compost a year before planting in.
That’s interesting, I followed the advice of somebody who seemed to know what they were talking about, but I’m not sure if it works in this climate. Or at least it needs to be much warmer before they start to decompose.
Do they need more heat than standard potatoes? Sweet potato fries are pretty good and pie is popular but they remind me a lot of carrots. If they grow better than carrots you'd have a winner.
Yeah, they apparently need a lot more heat, probably only a really viable crop if you live in a place with the kind of heat that they like.
the praise of the light weight grow bag material makes me think of how these are traditionally grown in sand. that seems like a lighter well drained soil. too. Any thoughts on last years crop adapting to your climate? interested to see if they keep improving year afer year, since these are propogated and not going to seed.
Yeah, they seem to enjoy lighter conditions in the soil. Not sure if there’s any chance of any adaptation, I think the key to this crop will always be ensuring more warmth.
I wanted to try growing sweet potatoes last season too, but I had trouble getting the plants from store bought "tubers". They just kept rotting and when I finally managed to get one to root and sprout, I somehow managed to forget about the transplanted plants and let them dry out. It was late in the season anyway, but I was hoping to at least get an idea about how the plants would grow, even if they didn't manage to produce much.
Hope next year is better for you. I agree that it can be valuable to just see how things grow, even if they are not successful, at least for the first season.
Here are some suggestions: Make sure you get an organic sweet potato to start with so you can have as much assurance as possible that it hasn't been sprayed with a sprouting inhibitor. Get your potato a few months in advance of needing it, and rather than planting it, just leave it out in a warm place. It should eventually send out shoots on its own. Once these grow to 5-10cm, you can pot them up. If slips form earlier than expected, you can simply grow it as a houseplant in a brightly lit place and take stem cuttings (root in water) for planting in the garden.
@ Thanks for the tips. I've heard about the spraying they might do, unfortunately I haven't seen organic ones as on option anywhere here, I should probably look around more. Or at least I might try letting it start growing on its own, I am just too impatient to wait for "eventually". :D
From growing them in north Florida, I'm surprised you can do anything with them in Ireland. We plant at the beginning of June when the rains start. Generally, 90*F hi/75*F lo /60 to 100% humidity. It's a hot, wet, sticky time of year. We are growing in sand. We put the balanced fertilizer to them when they start vining and then use something higher in potassium a month or so later. They do not require much more than that. Which is good, because that time of year, it is unbearable to work outside. We harvest in late November or early December when the vines die. I find curing requirements overstated. We stack up crates full of sweet potatoes right beside the field and cover them with black cloth. They are ready to go in two weeks. My only real pest issue with sweet potatoes is deer coming through and grazing them to bare vines, which just sets them back.
Thanks for sharing your method. It is really a marginal crop here.
I have a similar climate in scotland - when do you start making slips?
Last year I started in mid February, but I think that was too early, so don’t really know when is best to start. I’m planning to start them in mid March this year.
Do you have some hotbed around? I mean you got all the ingrediences... that might help the sweet potatoes
That would be interesting to try.
Link for the cooler growing Sweet Potatoes supplier please.
genius!
I bought them from Fruit Hill Farms
Did the grow bags have holes for drainage?
Yes, on the bottom of the bag, and roots able to get through to the soil below.
When you determine the "bang for the buck" for growing different plants in the poly tunnels, is it just the Kg/M^2 or do you factor in calories, protein, etc.?
Usually only kg/m2. With protein and calories I would need to rely on industrial average values, rather than anything specific to what I actually grow. I think that many crops can have hugely different protein levels depending on the growing conditions, potatoes is a significant example. Also, in the past I have focused more on filling people’s plates with vegetables, assuming people have limited space. figuring there were better or easier sources for food higher in calories and protein that people can get from elsewhere.
Useful to know! I had pretty good success from a DIY low caterpillar tunnel outside in southern Norway, made from hoops and transparent plastic sheeting (from construction).
I think I'll repeat that this year, but adding a black MyPex style ground cover over a compost mulch. So still growing in the ground, but trying to catch as much warmth as possible.
I have heard other growers report that growbags give better yields than growing in the ground. What size growbag would you recommend?
Apparently a clear plastic is better at warming the soil, as it lets the sun in and traps the warmth. With the black fabric it heats up but most of the rest is radiated into the air above. Something to perhaps explore. Good luck with the crop!
@@REDGardens Aha, I wasn't sure about that part. Then I think I'll try a dark compost mulch under a clear plastic low tunnel instead. Thanks!
Any taste test yet Bruce?
Wasn't overly impressed with the taste of any of them, but I think that was more due to not getting the curing process right.
Wow! Your audio sounds quite different in this video. Great lighting! One thing I plan to focus on in 2025 is better trellising, and that includes for sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes love to sprawl, and as you noted, the vines rooting at leaf nodes may be an issue. (Though sweet potato leaves and vines are delicious for those of us with healthy kidneys.) I intend to grow them along a bit of a "hut," a squat A-frame of canes and straight branches I collected in 2024. A simple netting might help keep those vines off the soil without needing covers that may keep the soil too cool early in the season.
With the straw/hay bale planting methods, that seems to take much more run-up time & resources to get the interior well-rotted and reasonably saturated with nutrients from added fertilizer before planting. The method isn't very economical for where I am, so my familiarity ends with a couple lackluster experiments.
Your videos are getting me psyched to return to the garden again this coming season, despite a couple rough years of failure here.
Thanks. Not sure about the audio in this one, it is clearer, but fair amount oof echo in the room. I do like the lighting better, have invested in better lights, and reflector. Now I just need to finish painting the room and hang something on the wall.
@@REDGardens Can't wait to see what you do with the space! Thanks once again for another excellent video.
Maybe start the grow bags in the tunnel, then move outside once the weather's really warm.
If only it actually got really warm here 😁. We had that one summer in the last 12 years!
@@REDGardens Maybe a low tunnel outside then.
I make them from blue alkathene water pipe & the polythene covers off new mattresses (I get the polythene off a local furniture store for free as it saves them the cost of disposal).
Something's off with the audio on the voice over. but im enjoying video and its not too bad :)
That is strange. I have noticed sometimes TH-cam videos can be out of sync.
Try covering the soil with clear plastic instead of cardboard. It will heat the soil and stop some weeds.
That could work quite well!
What month do you start the slips? also did you grow 'Covington'? I heard it may grow better here. The channel Deep South Homestead has tonnes of very good sweet potato videos including several videos on producing the slips. Different climate but relevant info contained in the videos.
Thanks for the recommendation. I started them in late February last year, but think that was too early. The only variety I know is the ‘Orleans’, which seems to be the only variety available in Ireland. The other varieties were whatever could be bought from the supermarket, so have no idea.
@@REDGardens Supermarket sweet potato varieties will be named on the bag, I got covington & beauregard from tesco. In lidl, the loose sweet potatoes; variety will be named on the side of the box. Both varieties above are very common & may even be one of the ones you grew. Keep a close look at the supermarket ones label / packet, they are often named.
I planted three varieties in the front yard under my fruit trees as ground cover around 5 years ago. I never had to plant them again, literally can’t eat them all.
I’m in a much warmer climate than you tho, Texas is hot lol
Woah, that is crazy. So cool to be able to do.
Aren't you in Zone 8 or 9 there? I'm in zone 9'ish but don't use a polytunnel. Just grow the slips indoors until they can survive outdoors.
My current issue for sweet potato is the hard clay soil in my current place that I'm slowly improving.
Nice video. Cheers!
I don't know the zone here, not really a thing in Ireland. Our issue isn't so much how hard or cold the winters are, which I think is what the what the zone system is based on. Even though our winters are relatively warm, possibly equivalent to a zone 8 or 9, the cool summers are the problem with growing crops like this. We tend to get only a few days when the temperature gets above 20ºC in the summer.
The thermostat at darn near the ceiling drives me nuts
Haha, very low ceiling at that point. Thermostat is at eye level.
I feel like you want to grow southern Appalachian foods. If you want to do a garden grow out in Western NC let me know.
That would be so cool!
I didn't grow sweet potatoes last year. The year before I had multiple individual roots weighing more than 2kg each with most plants producing over 3 kg. They don't really get woody when they get that big, so no issues there though that's definitely not a "baking potato". Shallow soil temperatures here reach around 30C at the height of summer. Sweet potatoes rival maize and wheat for calories produced in a given area, and far outproduce white potatoes. Those don't like the short spring and hot summers my continental temperate climate provides.
If you're concerned about the plants being pot bound and producing twisted roots as a result, just cut the plants off at the top of the growing medium and re-root in water. Sweet potatoes are among the easiest plants to propagate from stem cuttings, and you'll likely have them all in the ground within a week on a fresh set of roots.
You probably got about the best yield you could get from your grow bags, but if you try larger bags at some point, consider either manually trellising the vines or giving them space to spread out. Most varieties I have experience with concentrate production on the initial roots at the point of planting, so at least for me having lots of tiny roots form along the vines at the expense of the main crop has never been a big deal.
You should really press your luck and try okra sometime!
Thanks for the tips. I am looking forward to seeing what can be done next year! Getting a good crop of okra would be quite an achievement!
Really interesting, where do you get your growbags ?
the internet. ever heard of it?
Yeah, they can be really hard to find, at least here in Ireland. I ended up finding a source in Deker horticulture, I’m not sure if anyone else supplies them.
@@REDGardens thanks so much!
How I grew sweet potatoes like an idiot:
1. Buy organic sweet potatoes from the store.
2. Root them in damp woodchips to produce slips.
3. Plant the slips in amended, well-draining soil.
4. Carefully monitor the plants throughout the season.
5. Completely forget to harvest the sweet potatoes at the end of autumn.
6. Dig up ruined, inedible tubers several weeks after the frost.
😂 Yep, I can see that happening - almost lost mine to frost!
Wait. The heat-loving sweet potato grows better not cold?
Love ur videos usually, I’ve learned a lot. Not this time.
Haha, just didn’t expect so much difference.
Terrible sound, switched off halfway as it was hurting my ears. It's resonating off the hard walls with no soft surroundings.
Sorry about that. Need to sort the new space.
@@REDGardens yeah I can see you've had some building work going on in the background
I thought this was great content, highly relevant to me. I went to your donate page and saw you described yourself as He/him. I have no time for woke nonsense so I won't be donating.
I thought you were down to the earth, a sensible human, seems I was mistaken.
Woke nonsense? Sorry for triggering you! Sounds like you really need to meet more people. Most of the really sensible and down to earth people I know are ‘woke’. Kind of a key characteristic, I find, is to be able to have empathy for other people, and not easily convinced to hate those who are different. Thanks for the thought at least.