Potatoe are not lik tomatoes that have to ripen. You can carfully remoove the soil from aound the bushes and fish young tender potatoes. Then put the soil back. Of course, you can do this a few weeks after they flower. Mature tomatoe develope good skin that can be stored for long haul. I am going to plant some white, yukon gold and purple this year. About soil PH: Potatoes can grow in the same PH as tomatoes or most other veggies. The reason they recommend low PH is to prevent scabs. So, do not worry about PH, since you are not going to market them. Just plant them in your regular garden soil. Too muchn nirogen(N) can grow a big foliage but not necessairyl more tubers. Potatoes like Potash (k). Wood ask is a good natural source for K.

Like an idiot I have earthed up over my labels which tell me which potatoes I have in which barrels! Is there any way of telling which potatoes are in each without tipping the whole lot out? Are there differences in the leaves or flowers??? Thank Charlotte

egganddart: You can plant potatoes at any time of year--counting to their days of maturity for when you want to HARVEST them. The reason they're generally planted early on--we do it on St. Patrick's Day in my zone 7--is that it's known that the tubers form better in the cool nights of early Spring. Nevertheless, I know old farmers in my area who plant an early crop, a mid-season crop, and a late crop. They store the late crop over winter. My relatives--all farmers--did the same--stored them over Winter in bushel baskets in our "brick room" (a cool, unheated room below ground level), and used them all Winter long. They kept best in our brick room at 40-50 degrees--rarely had a problem with any rotting. Also kept bushel baskets of onions and sweet potatoes at the same temperature (and in the same room). An old farmer here told me he's planted them deep, in the Fall before the ground froze, to come up in Spring--to each his own. I'm sure you're aware that if you happen to miss some in the late Summer or early Fall, while harvesting them, they WILL come up in Spring (if vermin haven't eaten them, or something hasn't caused them to rot). Of course, potatoes are one vegetable that requires acid soil--you can do a search, but I think the recommended pH is about 4.5 to 5.5. Besides the sulphur (mentioned above) warding off disease, sulphur also acidifies the soil (lime raises pH, sulphur lowers it). Plant them in your most acid soil.

Carol, I am a bit worried about mixing them up when I harvest. Assuming we are not in the middle of a weather crisis or fire crisis or whatever when I harvest in the fall, I'm going to slowly and methodically harvest one variety at a time and store them in labeled bins so I don't mix them up. We'll see a few months from now how that plan works out! I prefer rooting in soil because then when I put them in the ground, I really don't have to pay them any attention for days or weeks, instead of watching and worrying about that initial wilt you often see before they grow enough roots. Really, though, sweet potato slips perform well for me if put directly into the ground unrooted, if rooted in water, or if rooted in soil. They are just a cinch to grow. Growing experimental varieties is interesting because you don't know what to expect (Gary knows, but unless he tells me something special about a variety, I don't know....). We have learned already that the Vardaman USDA stock that Gary obtained from the USDA is not the right color foliage expected for Vardaman, so that's an anomaly to think about. I've been calling it Gary's Faux Vardaman USDA, which Jay, Gary and a few other tomato afficianados will know was inspired by Earl Cadenhead's Faux Brandywine, commonly referred to as "Earl's Faux". So, the world now has "Earl's Faux", but I have "Gary's Faux". I'll call it that until Gary tells me what it is going to be called. Jay, So, now that you've started the garlic fad in SW KS, you're on the road to starting the Sweet Potato fad? What a trendsetter you're becoming. It strikes me as odd that celery grows for you, but I'm glad it does. That WILL be a really special thing to have to sell at the Farmer's Market because of its rarity there. Jay, my plants arrived as unrooted cuttings. Yours may have been different depending on when you received them and also depending if they were some of the regular varieties he is selling this year or if they were experimental ones like mine. I'm Gary's guinea pig this year. Mine were rubber-banded together in groups of three, and each bundle of 3 was in ziplock bag, I think it was, to keep them from drying out. They had name tags on them. He shipped them one day, and I received them the next. They came so quickly and looked so fresh you never would have believed they traveled across the state. I immediately labeled cups and put them into the cups to root. Lynn, Sweet potatoes are really simple. Just remember that they like well-drained soil, are really drought-tolerant and heat-tolerant and need to be fed occasionally. Since they're a root crop, soil is the main factor that determines how they'll perform. In very poor sand, they'll grow and produce low yields of smooth, high-quality roots. (This is sort of a Goldilocks and the Three Bears kind of plant.) In very rich soil, like a rich, humusy, heavy soil, they'll produce high yields of rough-looking, low-quality roots. In sandy loam, they'll be just right, giving you a moderately high yield of smooth, great to excellent-quality roots. How well the soil drains is very important since poorly draining soil of any type tends to give you roots that are stringy, oddly shape and sometimes cracked. For the best yield, your soil pH should be between 5.5 and 6.5, but they do well for me on soil that's been amended well enough to bring it down from about 8.0-8.2 to about 6.8-7.2. Sweet potatoes do not need highly enriched and highly fertile soil...just moderately fertile soil that drains well. You should try to match your fertilizer to the kind of soil you have. For example, if you're growing on heavy and fertile clay, you might want to fertilize with a 1-2-2 ratio fertilizer (like a 10-20-20) at a rate of 1/2 lb. of granular fert for every 35 feet of row. But, if your soil is sandy and less fertile, use the same fertilizer, but apply 3/4 lb. per 35' row. If your soil is highly fertile, skip the fertilizer. To fertilize, scatter the fertilizer in a 2' wide band on either side of the furrow were you'll plant your slips. You also can choose the higher 3/4 lb. amount if you normally have heavy rainfall or if you know you'll be irrigating a lot. Irrigation is not necessary in most place, but it might be necessary in Jay's part of Kansas. Usually, once they're rooted in and established themselves, you don't have to water them unless you are in pretty droughty conditions. They are one of the few crops that REALLY does well when grown dryland with no irrigation. If you're in a heavy rainfall area or irrigate a lot, you may want to sidedress the plants about a month or so after they were planted, using the same fert. at the same rate as you did when planting. If you see them wilt during the heat of the day, that is normal. Their foliage is delicate and tender and does wilt, but normally bounces back as the sun goes down and the air cools a little. Don't panic and water them unless their soil is totally dry. They like moist but not wet soil so don't go overboard with watering once they are established. Towards the end of their growing period, when the roots are starting to enlarge, you shouldn't be irrigating. Too much water at that time can give you cracks in your sweet taters as well as rough, tough and misshapen roots. I mulched mine with alfalfa hay and laid down landscape cloth before I planted, and then planted them in big X's cut into the landscape fabric. I covered the fabric with the hay. This makes them a carefree crop. Weeds won't sprout because of the fabric, the mulch keeps the soil moist and cool, and the combination of landscape fabric and mulch keeps the runners from rooting into the soil. You don't want the runners to root into the soil because they'll form sweet potato roots wherever they root into the ground. What's so bad about that? The more places they root, the more the secondary roots will take nutrition from the primary roots. This can give you large yields of lower quality roots. It is better to have smaller yields of higher quality roots because higher quality roots taste better and store a little longer. You can harvest anytime after they've reached the right size you expect for that variety....normally in about 100-110 or 115 days. Dig gently a foot or two away from the plant and see if the roots have enlarged and are the expected size. If they are, dig 'em when they're dry, or leave them in the soil a while so the can size up more if you want them a little larger. Just be sure to dig them before soil temps drop below 50. At temps below 50, you can see damage. Dig them, brush the dirt off, cure them at about 55-60 degrees for a couple of weeks, and put them into their low-term storage location. Most years they'll last 3 or 4 months in storage and sometimes much longer depending on how wet/dry they were, how they're stored, etc. I've never had an insect problem on sweet potatoes, but some folks have sweet potato weevils which tunnel through them and ruin them. In soils infested with nematodes, you may see damage in the form of surface pitting or cracks. In very heavy soils you may have rot issues. Almost every year I've ever grown them, though, they've been 100% trouble free. You can, literally, plant them and pretty much forget about them. In one very wet year, and I think it was in 2007 when we had a prett wet April and May followed by a foot of rain in June, the ones that were in an area with more clay rotted and died, but the ones in the improved sand (where I am growing them this year) were fine. Dawn