Hi Cocoableachlorax Any variety of sweet potatoes are very easy to root, somebody asked a similar question before and the answer was not to eat the potato from the ornamental varieties because it is not that tasty.:) If you are growing them just for the vines, I would leave them like it is or you can start more vines with cuttings and put them in another basket. Hi Lou! Thank you. I remember harvesting sweet potatoes even in the winter, if we don't have frost they do fine even with the cold. A guru from the veggie forum recommended for taste alone Okinawa purple and Mahon's, it is going to be very interesting to find out about the flavor and because I got them late like you, I will be harvesting them about the same time... Silvia

Posyplanter, Well, I am referring more in general to the type of soil but if you find a particular spot where they're happy, I think you could grow them there every year. In general, sweet potatoes are very disease-resistant and very few pests bother them in a home garden. So, I grow mine in one of two places (or, sometimes, in both those places) every year and don't really engage in crop rotation since there's little worry that either pests or diseases would build up in the soil. I add compost to the beds every fall/winter to put nutrition back into the soil, but since they're sweet potato beds and rich soil isn't needed/desirable for them, not too much compost....about an inch of compost goes into the sandy soil beds annually. In my case, I really couldn't rotate anyway. We have very thick and dense, brick-red clay that, even when well-amended, is too heavy for sweet potatoes. There is one narrow vein of sandy soil about 30' feet wide that cuts from north to south across our property and runs maybe 60'. Most of that area has trees in it, but I have carved out two small beds between those trees and my main vegetable garden and those beds are reserved for sweet potatoes. To rotate them, I'd have to move them to a raised bed of heavy, improved clay and I'd rather leave them in the sandy soil. I suppose if I ever have problems in the sandy soil, I'll have to either move them to clay the next growing season or skip growing them for a year. By the way, I have been in touch with my sweet potato slip provider this weekend and he tells me it has been a very bad year nationwide for planting sweet potatoes. Remember how wet last year was? Well, lots of commercial growers harvested the sweet potatoes just fine, but the potatoes held over to use as propagation stock for this year must have had either too high of a water content or were harboring some disease (commercial growers, because of monocropping, often see disease issues we home gardeners don't see). When the sweet potato slips were planted this spring, which also was abnormally wet in the sweet potato growing areas, many died and now sweet potato slips apparently are in short supply this year. That really makes me appreciate one of our local growers here in Oklahoma (Duck Creek Farms) even more because Gary did have sweet potato slips for sale this year so at least some of us were able to obtain some before we even knew they were in short supply nationwide. Sweet potatoes only store for maybe 2 to 3 months even in ideal conditions, so it is very difficult and a very complicated process for growers to keep sweet potato propagation stock alive from one fall to the following spring. Since our local grower is one of a small number of people seeking to bring back many heirloom varieties to the market here in the USA, it is especially important that he not lose his propagation stock. Sometimes, I think we home gardeners have it so easy...we buy stuff, plant it, grow it and harvest it and never realize the very hard work that is involved just in having something as 'simple' as sweet potato slips available for us to purchase. Seeing the struggles the commercial growers have gone through this spring with their sweet potato slips has given me a whole new appreciation for the fact that home gardeners like us can just buy slips and plant them. If we have to or want to, we can grow our own slips, but it is unlikely I'd be able to keep 20 heirloom varieties going over the winter every year without a greenhouse or something else. Dawn

Okiehobo, The sweet potatoes have very thin skins when dug. You have to let them cure for a while before you brush off the dirt, or--as you have discovered--you can brush off the skin with the dirt. The way to harvest sweet potatoes is to dig them while the soil is fairly dry and before soil temperatures drop below 50 degrees. While digging, gently lift them from the soil and place them in a container. Once your container is full, remove them from the container and lay them out on several layers of newspaper and let them do the first round of curing that way for 3 or 4 hours. Do not wash them or brush off the dirt at this point. I usually put several layers of paper on a table on my patio and cure them there in the shade where they are sheltered from rain, dew, etc. After 3 or 4 hours, you can move them to a more permanent curing location like a garage, sunporch, etc. Lay them on several layers of newspaper, and if you want to make it easier to move them around, lay the newspaper in plant flats or shallow cardboard boxes. Lay the potatoes in a single layer in a location that is somewhat sheltered and it should be a warm, somewhat humid, and definitely well-ventilated place. Cure them there for a couple of weeks. During this time the skin will toughen up quite a bit. You then can brush off the dirt gently or you can leave the dirt on them until you bring them inside to eat. At this point, you can put them in their permanent storage location. An unheated basement or tornado shelter works great, but so does an unheated pantry or closet. They store best right around 55 degrees and can incur cold damage if exposed to air temperatures below 50 degrees. Sweet potatoes normally don't store for a really long time--just a couple of months in general, and sometimes up to 4 to 6 months if they're really well-cured, and have high humdity and perfect temperatures around 55. The ornamental sweet potato you're thinking of is likely Marguerite. I've linked an image of it below. The ornamental sweet potatoes are normally available in nurseries around April or so. At the end of the season, you can dig up the 'potatoes' of the ornamental ones and store them for next year. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Marguerite Ornamental Sweet Potato

Well, I chunked up my purple taters, peeled them, boiled them, and then I put them in the blender. I was trying to mush them enough so I could make a pie filling. However, those things kept getting thicker and thicker, and so I added some nice fat free half and half....and instead of sugar, I put in a cup of Splenda. And the color is the most gorgeous lavender. I've done no further cooking, but it takes a big spoon to dip this out of the blender container. I think about 48 ounce size too. And my parrots love it, the dogs love it, and I love it. I mean, what is not to like about this smooth concoction, which tastes and has the texture of a pudding. I did not add any vanilla, but I suppose I could have but I wanted to see the taste of the natural sweet potato. Also, I could have left out the Splenda and had a veggie smoothie. I've downloaded a book on my Kindle which is a book about making green smoothies, out of raw foods. The blessed thing about such food, so many of the green foods are "free" foods that do not count against your diet if you are diabetic. That is one reason I've begun eating more dill pickles, sauerkraut, jalapenos, mustard on any sandwich, and then the SaraLee 10 carb whole wheat sliced bread....sometimes just one slice for an open faced sandwich. But the green smoothies are espousing the raw food diet, going beyond vegan to raw, and eliminating cooked foods of any kind. You can go part way with this sort of diet, which is what I would do, but I will give it a go because by eating raw greens, I've already lost 8 pounds. Hard to take it off, but great when it happens.