Dawn,
I only know of one nursery here who has offered slips in the past. I'm not sure what variety ect they offer. Have never grown them.

I hope you don't mind me changing the thread just a little. I will attach a link to an article about research a K-State horticulturist is doing. I have found his research interesting. It is along the lines of the blue tomato. Only with sweet potatoes. Jay

Here is a link that might be useful: Sweet Potato Research

Hi Dawn & Jay,

The Bethany Feed & Seed sells sweet potato slips in mid-spring but not sure if heirloom. I will call and ask....

Did you get snow again Dawn?

Enjoy your day.

Laura

Dawn,

I think Horn Seed Co in OKC had sweet potato slips last year. I don't know if they are heirloom or not, or even if they are locally grown. Some of their stuff is and some of it is not. They are a great company. I know that Sunrise Farm had Beaugard at the OSU OKC farmer's market. They also sell from their farm. I've also seen "white" sweet potatos for sell at the farmer's market. If one were to plan way in advance, you could buy some for the next year.

Happy Gardening,
Andria

Y'all, I am trying to compile a list of local or regional 'sweet potato resources' because Doku asked about heirlom sweet potatoes on a potato thread. I sent Gary at Duck Creek Farms in the Tulsa area an email asking if he was planting/selling heirloom sweet potatoes this year and I'll let you know when I hear back from him. It might take him a couple of days....as you all no doubt know, it is planting time and he's super-busy.

I know that we all can purchase heirloom sweet potatoes through places like Sandhill Preservation Center, but was hoping maybe we can find small growers raising/selling them here. If we want to have great produce or plants available to us all here in Oklahoma, we have to shop locally and encourage the folks growing it!

Jay, Perhaps ironically, I saw purple sweet potatoes at Central Market in Southlake, Texas, today. (Woo hoo---it was Dawn's trip to her favorite grocery story/amusement park today.) Actually, it was an empty bin that should have held Okinawa Purple Sweet Potatoes, but they were apparently sold out. I'm going to try to get some and taste-test them the next time I'm down there. They had 7 or 8 types, and of course I don't remember all of them off the top of my head, but I know they had Jewel and Louisiana Yam, and perhaps Beauregard and one of the white ones as well. My memory isn't worth a thing nowadays.

I enjoyed reading the link about purple sweet potatoes. I know Gary has mentioned in the past that he raises some purple ones at Duck Creek Farms, but I don't know the variety.

I do grow some blue and purple Irish potatoes, and they make the prettiest mashed potatoes in the world. Just think...if someone you knew was getting married, and they wanted pretty pastel purple or blue mashed potatoes or potato salad at their reception, you could do it! I think this year I have seed potatoes for Adirondack Blue and All-Blue, and maybe Peruvian Purple too, but they are Irish and not Sweet. They've been in the cellar so long, I've forgotten which ones they are.

Being the silly person I am, I like to mix together red, white and blue potatoes in dishes for the Fourth of July.

Hi Laura!

We had the tiniest smidgen of snow. It was just a light dusting of a few tiny flakes that fell for maybe 15 minutes, and it melted shortly after it fell. If I had scraped up all the snow on the ground and vehicles, it probably wouldn't have added up to a quarter-cup. The lack of snow didn't bother me...we had 8" just last week, or maybe it was the week before that. It is VERY cold here today, though, and I hate it. I want some sunshine!

Some parts of west Texas (Midland, Odessa, Lubbock and Abilene, I think) and some parts of central Texas (roughly the Stephenville to Waco to Austin area and perhaps some places south of there) had snow. Some of them had up to 6". I guess we'll have another shot at snow in parts of OK on Friday and then again on Sunday/Monday.

Andria,

I was wondering if Sunrise Farm had them at the Farmer's Market since I remembered them having heirloom tomatoes the first year I came to OKC for the plant swap--and I think it was in 2005 or 2006.

Y'all, I am expecting to receive a list from Gary that will let us know what heirloom sweet potatoes he's growing in NE OK this year. I think it will come via snail mail, and when I receive it, I'll post the info here.

In the meantime, I hope folks will continue to post sweet potato resources here now during our 'quiet time' so we'll have a thread to refer people back to when they're searching for local sources of sweet potato slips in mid- to late-Spring or early summer.

And on that topic, I want to start a similar thread for heirloom tomato plants that can be purchased in Oklahoma for those folks who want to grow heirlooms, but not from seed. We always recommend The Tomatoman's Daughter, and sometimes we mention places like Sunrise Acres that sell at the Farmer's Market, but I bet we can find other local growers and list them too. There again, if we expect local growers to sell heirloom tomato plants here in OK, we need to dig up those growers and give them our business.

Dawn

I have not seen any heirlooms for sale around here. They are usually Georgia Jet or just marked "Sweet potatoes." Jay, that's an interesting article. When we lived in Mexico I collected native Mexican kinds. None were named varieties. They were simply grown by native people and sold in the market. It took some years, but I did track down a purple skinned, purple fleshed sweet potato. It cooked up nice and sweet. Unfortunately, it is about impossible to legally import any growing material, from sweet potatoes, into this country. So I lost the whole collection when returning to the USA.

Korean Purple, from what I can tell, might be identical to the #1 most common sweet potato in Mexico. It has purple skin and white flesh. The Mexican version produced, easily, twice as much as any variety I grew with USA "roots." I don't know how it would have done here.

An idea might be for Oklahoma Gardeners to adopt one or two heirlooms and then do an annual swap by mail to those who would like to grow heirlooms. I have two heirlooms (Red Wine Velvet and Brinkley White) and two varieties developed by OSU (Oklahoma Red & Nemagold). This year I'm totally swamped with requests for Red Wine Velvet and my supplies of all are not going to be enough. But In the future I'd be willing to help a little.

George

George,

That does sound like a good idea for each of us to 'adopt' an heirloom sweet potato variety or two and then try to maintain/share that variety with other Okies.

Dawn

Dawn, thanks for starting this thread. I would much rather support a local business if I have a choice.

George, I think that is a wonderful idea to start an heirloom sharing effort within our group. I like the idea of making varieties available that might not otherwise be known or accessible to the group. I certainly would be willing to help in the effort.

Lynn

OK, y'all. I heard back from Gary who remains very busy planting up there in northeastern OK, and here's the list of Sweet Potatoes (both heirloom and hybrid) he intends to sell this year. Because it is hard to find heirloom varieties locally, I want to share this info with you.

He sells them already growing in three-packs at a cost of $2.50 per 3-pack at plant sales, festivals, Farmer's Markets, etc. He will ship bare-root slips to you if you are not in northeastern OK. (You can email him at Duckcreekfarms@AOL.com if you have questions about how to order. He doesn't have a website yet.) If I mistype any of the info he gave me, I hope y'all will blame me and not him.

Here's his listing of varieties available this year and if you can't find a description of any of these types by googling, let me know and I'll tell you his description of it.

SWEET POTATO PLANTS FOR 2010:

Allgold
Beauregard
Brinkley White
Bunch Porto Rico
Carolina Ruby
Centennial
Cherokee (limit 12 slips)
Continental Red
Cordner's Red
Covington PP18, 516
Dianne
Garnet
Georgia Jet
Nancy Hall
Nemagold
Okinawa Purple (limit 12 slips)
Oklahoma Red
Porto Rico
Pumpkin Yam (limit 12 slips)
Purple
Redgold
Red Japanese
Red Wine Velvet
Speckled Purple
Vardaman
White Triumph
Yellow Jewel

You can also buy a Grower's Choice 3-pack which may contain other varieties he grows but isn't listing this year.

For those of you in or close to NE OK, or who'll be traveling there this spring, I've listed all the places he'll be selling plants. Please note that sweet potatoes will be available on/after approximately May 3rd and I'll let you know if he tells me that he'll have some available earlier. At the plant sales earlier than that, he'll have heirloom and some hybrid tomatoes, herbs, sweet and hot peppers, and eggplant. His main activity is at the Cherry Street Farmer's Market in Tulsa, but I've tried to list which kinds of plants he'll be taking to the earlier Plant Sales and Festivals.

APRIL 3, 2010: 10 am - 4 pm: Tulsa Garden Center at 24th and Peoria, Tulsa, OK. The Oklahoma Horticulture Study Group presents a Tomato Growing Workshop with Sue Gray, OSU Extension. Plant sales from 10 am to noon and from 2-4 pm. Program with Sue Gray is from noon to 2 pm. A small selection of tomato plants and herbs will be available for purchase. The Tomato Growing Workshop is FREE and features Sue Gray and some other guest speakers.

APRIL 10TH: Sat. 8 am - 4 pm. Brookside Herb Fest, 41st and Peoria, Tulsa, OK. Partial inventory of plants available.

APRIL 17TH: Sat. 8 an - 4 pm. Sand Springs Herbal Affair, Downtown Sand Springs, OK,. (Next to Amish Kitchen Tent.) All herbs expected to be available and partial inventory of other veggie plants.

APRIL 24TH: Sat. 8 am- 4 pm. Jenks Herb and Plant Show. Downtown Jenks, OK. All herb plants should be available and partial inventory of tomatoes.

MAY 1ST: Sat. 9 am - 4 pm. Oklahoma Horticultural Study Group Plant Sale, Tulsa Garden Center, 24th & Peoria, Tulsa, OK. Next to the Linnaeus Garden...all his listed plants should be available plus some that are not on his list.

BEGINNING MAY 8, 2010: Cherry Street Farmer's Market, 15th and Peoria, Tulsa, OK. Saturdays only. Farmer's Market hours are 7 am to 11 am. He didn't tell me if he's there every week all summer long or what.

I have the list of tomato plants and herbs he's listing this year, and will put them in a separate tomato thread so people who don't grow sweet potatoes can find them. Please understand that Duck Creek Farms is a small, one-man operation and the availability of any variety he lists is contingent on the growing conditions and whether he's already sold out all of any give variety, etc.

I'm just so excited to know y'all will be able to find heirloom (and hybrid) sweet potato slips there in the Tulsa area in May, and also am excited I can order some from way down here. I have 'how to order' info and will e-mail it to any of you who want it.

Maybe someday, we'll have so many folks in Oklahoma maintaining heirloom lines that we'll have even more choices and especially in other parts of the state--but it is great to know that we have Duck Creek Farms and they sell heirloom sweet potato slips raised here.

If any of you run into other local growers at these types of plants sales, festivals or farmer's markets, I hope you'll let the rest of us know about them. I really and truly prefer to buy plants locally, especially since the local plants are more likely to be offered at the right planting time for us here in this part of the country.

Maybe over time we'll be able to build a great resource/source list.

I'm really feeling left out down here...no herb or plant festivals or sales....and our local Farmer's Market in Marietta only has 1 or 2 vendors most weeks. If I lived in the Tulsa area, I'd be out feeding my plant-buying addiction every weekend. (So, OK, for the sake of our family budget, maybe it is better that I live far away from all the plant sales and festivals.)

Dawn

Dawn - we'd love for you to move up here to Tulsa so you could feed your plant-buying addiction. We've come to depend on the herb festivals during April & May, and the farmer's markets during the summer months. We do have a wealth of local growers, and I, for one, am very thankful for that. They inspire me to grow more for our family and to depend less on the trucked-in produce available in the local grocers. Although, our local Reasor's grocery carries locally-grown and Oklahoma-grown produce, so they're doing their part to promote the local growers, as well.

So, are you tempted to move up here? We'd love to have you!

If any one is looking for a particular variety of Sweet Potato I might have it as I have over 125 varieties at last count. My first priority is to supply enough slips for a sweet potato trial this year, but after that I should have some available. Also I'm getting great response from the SSE which makes me think that growing sweet potatoes may be making a comeback. At one time Oklahoma had a huge sweet potato industry. OSU even had their own sweet Potato breeder and specialist. I'm on a Mission to bring back sweet potatoes

gary

Carol,

I would love to move to northeastern Oklahoma!

However, my DH commutes about 80 miles one-way to work and then about 80-miles back home again every single day he works. He has a great job and has been there almost 30 years.....he'd not gonna give it up. Do you think he'd mind commuting from Dallas to Tulsa? LOL

It just seems like y'all have such a thriving horticultural industry up there....and all the festivals and plant sales and local growers like Gary at Duck Creek Farms and Lisa at the Tomatoman's Daughter and local nurseries and places that sell actual compost and topsoil, for crying out loud. We have none of that here.

There were some pretty nice farms when we were looking for land here in 1997, but they're practically all gone now....everything is cows or horses instead of wheat, pecans, peanuts and melons. Our horticultural industry has collapsed, except for growing and baling hay.

And, if we could move...say, after DH retires in a few years, we wouldn't move because our only grandchild lives here...and I don't think we'll ever voluntarily move farther from her.

So, just know that when y'all are running around from local nurseries to plant sales to Herb or Plant Festivals, I am green with envy.

Dawn

Gary,

If you're online and see this, do you know why the sweet potato industry failed here in Oklahoma? Soil? Rainfall? Nematodes? I'm just curious because they seem insanely easy to grow here in my part of OK, especially down closer to Thackerville where the soils are mostly sandy and everyone used to grow melons commercially.

I have such heavy clay that I can't grow a large number of sweet potatoes, but I do have one band of sandy soil that I generally reserve for sweet potatos.

There are several of your varieties I want to try, if you have any of them left after you supply the trial with slips....and, if you don't, I'll order them from you next year.

I'll e-mail you about a sweet potato order in a few days. For the rest of this week, I HAVE TO focus on potting up my small tomato plants. They are getting too crowded in the starter flat and are muttering things and plotting behind my back everytime I walk out of the plant room. If I don't get them potted up soon, I will have a rebellion on my hand. : )

And, everyone--I said I'd start a thread with a list of heirloom tomato sources/resources here in OK, and I will do it tomorrow. I promise. Today, my best-laid plans derailed when a neighbor stopped by to visit and you know I just had to catch up on all the local news, and it was mostly happy news and we just couldn't stop talking.

Dawn

Dawn

I wish I knew the answer to that. One reason is possibly the demand In the 1930's per capita consumption was around 20 pounds and has dropped to a low of around 4 pounds based on 1990's reports. And while Oklahoma dose have good growing conditions, I suppose they have better growing conditions in NC and the lower south like LA, GA and AL where the bulk of the commercial production is grown.

I have seen more interest as of late with small Market growers wanting to grow sweets for Farmer's Market sales which is a good sign.

I remember, when I was a teen, growing up in NJ (another place which used to produce a lot of sweet potatoes) I read that per capita consumption of sweet potatoes had dropped from 60 lb, a generation earlier, to 20 lb per person. I don't know if that was just for NJ or for the country as a whole. So many Americans have relegated sweet potatoes to Thanksgiving only! Our family eats them several times a week. I have a cold baked sweet potato in my lunch today! When I pull out my sweet potato, at lunch, I can see funny looks from several co-workers. It's just not part of their eating style.

Sweet potatoes are kind of boring during most of the summer. There just isn't much to do or see with them. But the bottom line, for us, is that a good crop of sweet potatoes means we had a good gardening year, and a bad crop of sweet potatoes... well, that's very sad.

It is important, for preservation purposes, that SEVERAL parties maintain the same variety. Otherwise it is all too easy to lose a variety with a crop failure.

It would be great if individual gardeners made a point to adopt at least one rare variety, and stay with it. Honestly, "I have never met a sweet potato I didn't like!" There are some different flavors, colors and textures; but they are all good!

George

I've never been a sweet potato fan, but it might be because I've only had whatever variety is most common in grocery stores. I'm interested in finding some different varieties to try. It's the texture that I have a hard time with--the mushiness. Maybe there are drier varieties out there? I'm thinking about getting some slips to find out if I like homegrown sweets anymore than store bought. And this may sound counterproductive, but are there any that are less sweet?

absolutely, there are varieties that are not sweet at all and sometime compared to regular "Spud" potatoes, though, they are different. Sumor is one that is not sweet. Koto Buki is another

Asians prefer the dryer types, in fact, I went to an Asian market the other day and they had several varieties all of which were dry types.

Personally I like the very moist, sweet types and not a big fan of the dryer types, but I see that many people are just the opposite. I received an order thru SSE Year book today for Brinkley White, O Henry and Sumor. All white fleshed dryer types, so they obviously like them better.

Thanks! That's all I needed to hear (er, read) to convince me to try growing some. Maybe I'll go to the Asian market sometime this week and pick up a few to cook up for a taste test, too.

Gary, Brinkley White will sometimes come out drier. But try baking it "low and slow" (Low temp and until it's very soft). It will never be as moist as Red Wine Velvet, but it comes out pretty moist and VERY sweet when prepared that way. My wife has been baking sweet potatoes on top of the wood stove (and under an inverted pan to trap heat) this winter. Sometimes she leaves them for hours. Wow! What a TREAT!

By the way, when we grew that Mexican sweet potato, with purple skin and white flesh, about every other year one of the slips from it would mutate and produce a yellow skinned, light yellow fleshed sweet potato. Apparently the Mexicans didn't think much of this sport; unless this only happened to me, which I doubt. They always seemed to prefer the purple skin/ white fleshed version.

George

Thanks George

here is a little blurb I found on the internet:

Slow-baked (300-325)
sweetpotatoes appear
"sweeter" because of a natural
enzyme (beta amylase). It
works best at 171° (internally)
but is inactivated at 203°. The
texture is also smoother because
slow baking changes the
starch to malt sugar and some
of the malt sugar to a moist
caramelized sugar. Crockpots,
steaming, micro-waving, stewing,
pan-frying, boiling, and
grilling are options too. [Do
not cut sweetpotatoes with a
carbon-based knife. (The
sweetpotatoes will discolor.)
Always use stainless steel
knives.

Sounds like your wood stove is perfect for cooking sweets.....

Wow! Now if I can remember that! But I guess that's why a "fast cooked" sweet potato can have inferior flavor.

George

laspasturas thanks for asking that question. I always thought I disliked sweet potatoes (I know, I know--I thought I hated all vegetables lol) but I'm sure now it's just that I'm not a fan of a potato that's too sweet.

The other day I had sweet potato fries that were actually really good. They were really mild...some sweetness but not overly sweet like I've had in the past. Guess it's just my Celtic roots...the more like an Irish spud the better :-) IMO.

I'd already decided to grow some this year as an ornamental, but I'm rethinking that. If there's a mild sweet potato out there I'll plant a bunch :-)

I also prefer to buy local rather than order from out of state--and I'm pretty local to Tulsa so I'm thinking this looks good for this year. Hmmm....where can I find more room in my garden spot...hmm...(I think I'm a chronic reviser!)

Mandy