Did you know today is #NationalCookASweetPotatoDay? Neither did we, but hey, any excuse for sweet potatoes is good enough for us! And while you’re cooking, why not learn some fascinating history about this particular root vegetable: https://youtu.be/KHf0tnV9LQ0
This was my first year growing #Okinawa#Japanese#purple#SweetPotatoes. We love the taste & they grew well in our sack planters. I grow almost all tubers out of containers because I find it's easier to control & harvest than planting in ground. I will grow a lot more of them, next year. I grew only a few this year to experiment. Grows well in #Zone8 in #Saanich.
Good luck for the season! @stephenharlow
In January, I started exactly the same way here in northern Germany. Since spring and early summer were partly too cold and dry, the plants had a very slow start.
Yesterday was the first day frosts might be expected in the long term mean around here.
So I'll watch the weather reports closely to harvest the foliage before the first frost as I don't have high hopes for the tubers. #SweetPotatoes#gardening
I planted some #slips from grocery store #SweetPotatoes, and on only a few days they have turned into real plants.
I have never grown sweet potatoes. This is just a test. The frost will kill these vines long before they produce.
This isn't like growing potatoes. You don't bury any of the fleshy part, you break off a long slip, and then bury it diagonally, with only a little bit above the dirt.
Like tomatoes, any part of the slip can become roots.
When Spanish explorers were introduced to the sweet potato, they called it "#batata", borrowing a native word.
Later, when the inca showed them the potato, they called it "patata", which seems to be a combination of a native word like "papa" and their borrowed word, "batata".
The word "patata" came into English as "potato" long before English speakers encountered the batata.