Growing Sweet Potatoes

It has been many months since I posted an update about my garden activities. Reason being I am much less active with blogging and my backyard vegetable garden has its good and bad times. There were weeks and months that I have abandoned it due to a full time job, where weekends are simply too short with tonnes of other things to do. However, in September last year I decided to submerge the bottom half part of 2 really delicious sweet potatoes to get several slips. Took around 3-4 weeks for the slips to grow to a decent size for transplanting. I then planted the slips into the soil and let it be. Soil needs to be loose and drains well. Will not work in clay soil. This was my 2nd attempt at growing sweet potatoes. The first attempt 2-3 years ago yielded just a few very small tubers so I wasn't really expecting much at all from this 2nd attempt. I decided to try again as this time the sweet potato variety is tiny, cute and really sweet with smooth non-fibrous texture. I planted the slips in around October last year. I watered it regularly and scattered kitchen waste (fruit and vegetable peel) as often as I could. And the vines grew and grew with lush delicious leaves which I sometimes picked and stir fried them. After about 7-8 months, most of the vines started to wilt and brown so I figured okay its time to dig and see what lay beneath. I was expecting only a couple of tiny and cute tubers, just like the parents. To my utter surprise and delight, I got several large tubers! Ohhh what a joy!!! I didn't know how they got so big! Although the taste was not as sweet as their tiny parents, but still not too bad and the texture was equally non-fibrous. Next variety I plan to grow is the Japanese sweet potatoes! Can't wait! But my backyard is just a tiny plot and there are so many other plants I wish I could grow all at one. Oh well, several at a time I guess. Still absolutely thrilled! Below are the said sweet potatoes dug out 3 weeks ago.

Happy gardening!