I did Korean purple. Also had a lot of whoppers, and a lot that are large and very long, the variety seems to have that tendency. I find cool storage is the problem for sweets, must be moderately warm.

I did a 300-foot row a few miles from my house, so I ended up harvesting over a 3-4 week period in about 5 or 6 visits. It was interesting to see the difference in average yield per plant from the first time about sept 15 to today. Big difference. I set bought slips into a raised bed made by the bed-former plastic-laying machine. In addition to the dried chicken manure that got spread in all the beds I added sul-po-mag, manganese sulphate, boron, cobalt sulphate and moly. The vines were rampant and vibrant with health.

A view of the final 50 feet or so:

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A relatively common whopping harvest for one plant, maybe ten pounds or so, by the final dig:
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This looked great pnbrown! Hope you could stay organic and delay commercializing as long as possible.

Do they have purple flesh? If so, where did you get your slips? Very nice by the way!

Jay

pnbrown,
Wow! Those Koreans look fantastic. I grew them last year but did not put any sweets in this year. Seeing your harvest I will most certainly plant sweets in 2012.

jrslick,
If pnbrown is growing the same Koreans I grew in 2010 they are white/yellow inside. I grew some of my own slips from the local Korean market sweets that I buy. I also purchased some slips from an eBay vendor but can no longer contact them.

Cheers all,
DL

Yes, the Korean flesh looks white when uncooked and then turns yellow when cooked. They are in the top group for flavor and texture, IMO. For those of you familiar with the brix charts, I tested one the other day and it was a "hazy" 14, which is excellent.

Ceth, I "piggy-back" onto the operation of a farmer friend. Obviously that saves me a lot of handwork, like making beds and laying plastic. Like most organic farmers he does not re-use the beds, but I am trying to persuade him to leave some of this year's pepper and tom rows for me to put sweets into next year. I think that would be an excellent use of otherwise wasted resources. And the 300' where I just pulled the plastic back and sowed with winter wheat I could pull the plastic back over in april and do irish potatoes.

We'll see. He's pretty skeptical about my nutty ideas, though the sweet potato results made an impression.

I am tempted, I am tempted. PN has slightly warmer climate than mine, though probably my summers are slightly hotter. Wayne is very close to my climate. I assume the must-haves are black plastic, that's it. Otherwise it is undemanding I hear (assume reasonably good garden soil). Does it need well drained soil like potatoes or will it accept some wet episodes? And the deer won't eat it? I have just a spot outside the fence. And can I start with supermarket yams made into slips, or better do it from a reputable source?

I think you will be able to have some production, Glib. The fellow in Iowa, sandhill preservation, is at least as short a season.

Well-drained is good, definitely. If the soil is heavy I would make high ridges. The foliage is the ultimate deer-candy. Do not bother if you cannot totally exclude them. If you want the best types then you must buy slips or tubers. The Korean Purple is widely available as a grocery item, I think. Avoid Beauregard, it's one of the worst for flavor. I would generally avoid any orange-fleshed tubers in the grocery stores, they are bred for uniformity and shipping. Sometimes you can find some organic white-fleshed ones that are decent.

Many times I have acquired great heirloom varieties and then lost them due to inability to get tubers through to slip-making time. Curing is really important, and storage must be good, some air-circulation, no temps below 55, or 60 is better.

Hey Wayne,
You got me excited to go out and pull a couple of plants and see how they are doing, well... they weren't as big as yours ,but they look nice (my first year trying sweet potatoes) for grocery store bought and propagated my own slips.

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Sweetpotatoes cannot endure wet spots, but in the north they need high ridges unless you are very sandy. If the soil is consistantly wet, many varieties will get a bad case of scurf...you don't want that fungal. Plastic mulch will keep the soil much drier which is desirable up to a reasonable point. You may have to water in droughty weather.

They grow well in less fertile soils. Compared to pnbrown's mine are well, huge[er] than the ones pictured. I hate to plant them on unfertile soil [which I don't have anyway] to keep the size down.

I had some monsters, like Jon's 6-pounder. They are fun to find while digging but aren't convenient for baking. We could bake one and make a pie out of it! I posted the photo because the large number of very consistently-sized tubers was remarkable.

A key tactic is to keep the slips soaking wet after setting for at least 7 days. If they dry out during that time in hot sun, especially with plastic, they'll die.

My home grown slips are well rooted and are very quick to take off. They are shorter and stockier than those long-long skinny mail order plants [which mostly survive with good care].

Hey PNBROWN,
Mine is only 60 ounces ,almost 4 pounds, sorry for the confusion, my scale reads in ounces ;-)

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ONLY 4 pounds? Geez. I'll have to weigh some of the whoppers when I get them back home from the curing place.

Wayne, I agree, home-grown slips get established faster.

I harvested my sweet potatoes yesterday. This is the first time I've grown them, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I am amazed - from 8 slips in a 4x4 raised bed I got 80.6 pounds of sweet potatoes. I think the variety was Beauregard. I knew I was probably planting them too close together, but I didn't have a lot of space and figured I'd see what happened. We built a trellis out of two leftover pieces of cattle panel - about 4' long and 50 inches wide. Tied them together at the top with heavy plastic twist ties (from soaker hose packages). Here's the photo of the fully covered trellis as DH was helping me take it apart this morning. I hacked back vines periodically through the summer as they escaped and tried to colonize the aisles, the next garden bed, etc.

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This is what it looked like after we had removed the trellis and uncovered the bed.

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Here's the sweet potatoes spread out in the bed to air.

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And finally here's my husband's hand to show size. "Goliath" the potato he is touching weighed in at 8.4 pounds.

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I have no idea if these will taste good or not, but you can bet I'll try sweet potatoes again next year!

Cindy

Cindy, that is a walloping yield by area. Beauregard is famous for those immense yields. Not to be a spoil-sport, but next year grow some heirlooms and you will certainly notice the difference in taste.

In GA you can grow the excellent long-season types, like nancy hall and many others.

Hey PnBrown,

No offense - I actually plan on growing the heirlooms next year - I'd thought about that, but didn't get around to ordering this year. We had a taste tonight - they're a little bland - not bad, just not the rich flavor I was hoping for. But they haven't cured yet either.

So you recommend Nancy Hall? Where would you buy? Sandhill? Or?

I love gardening in GA - used to live in Mass and grew organic and intensive gardening then (15+ years ago). The long season is really nice here. No coddling the okra here!

They'll be a lot better after curing, definitely. The first of the crop that I ate over a month ago was blando extremo, the one I had baked tonight was superb. A month from now they'll be getting absurdly sweet.

I used tatorman in kentucky, george's plant farm. In florida in april I bought 4 different long-season types from them, including nancy hall, and bush porto rico. They were doing very well until the deer smelled them from the depths of ocala national forest and came out to eat every leaf. You are welcome deer, for some tasty minerals and all my labor making beds and watering slips to keep them alive in the hot dry wind. Actually, I'd like to shoot you, my fine fawns, but no doubt some cracker hunters will do so next month and eat those minerals in your venison.

Up here I bought just slips of korean purple, also from tatorman. I was pleased with the slips, sturdy and quick to take both times. Thanks to deer fencing and black plastic I have an embarrassment of korean riches.

Anyway, no, I can't vouch for the quality of nancy hall. Sounds like farmerdilla has eaten them though, judging by the other thread. He wasn't impressed but he's not a fan of whites. Some say NH is the best, so I have read.

Excellent! I'm really pleased to hear that they improve with time. So you go back and forth between Ocala and Mass? What a cool way to garden. I sympathize on the deer... We've had our issues with them here too. And apparently sweets are even better than okra and sunchokes to deer.

I'll check into George's - looks like a good place to order from for next year AND they'll be earlier than the farm stand. :) Thank you!

Nancy Hall is a deep yellow with some good flavor. Since I have had O'Henry I like it better as it is very smooth while Nancy Hall is somewhat coarse and a bit stringy and not as smooth in shape either. I prefer both to the orange ones though.

Wayne, maybe we can swap Korean for O'henry? How many days is it supposed to be?

O'Henry is about 100 days and is light yellow inside.