Growing sweet potato here in South east Queensland is not difficult for most. Whilst they struggle a little in winter, we do manage to maintain our crop through the colder months. We plant out and harvest a sweet potato crop here at Tullamore Farm every 3 months. We generally have 4 crops at varying stages of development and we harvest a crop between 8 and 10 months after planting. This depends on the season and how much rain and how warm it has been. They love the Heat. The hotter it is, the faster they will grow. Leave them in the ground too long though and you will end up with large woody tubers. Not so tasty.
Sweet Potatoes don’t like heavy waterlogged soil, cold weather and fertilizers high in nitrogen. Too much nitrogen and you end up with lots of leaves and not much sweet potato. We eat the young fresh leaves and stems. We have them in juices and often in stir-fries’. There are not many plants that can provide the same nutrition per square meter as the humble sweet potato. We grow the common orange variety and that colour comes from its high content of Beta Carotene which is an antioxidant.
Because we have been growing them here for years they pop up everywhere. Once you have them in your growing system you can grow them from either small tubers/plants or purely from cuttings. Plant a young healthy cutting straight in the soil or leave it in water until shoots start to emerge. Water the youngsters well until they are established.
Once they are established you can largely ignore them until harvest time. We harvest the whole bed but you could have them growing permanently in one spot and just dig up what you need for a meal. The Sweet Potato is easy to spot as they poke up through the topsoil. When we harvest ours we leave some of the soil on them and store in the cellar, but any cool dry spot will work. They will keep this way for months.
