Successful Sweat potato propagation a journey of discovery.
How to grow sweat potatoes without digging the ground using weeds, long grass and lawn clippings!
Hi.
Growing sweat potatoes was a challenge for years, to dig hard ground and with variable crop quality, as borer insect larvae would always spoil the tubers just before harvest.
So here is one way to grow them in a temperate climate in late spring.
First select and mark out an area of suitably free draining flat ground.
Then cut and stack long dry grass or dry weeds onto this area up to a 1 metre high, pack down by standing on the heap.
When done use a lawn mower to catch some grass and spread the clippings over the heap to a depth of 50mm all over, make sure the heap is totally covered to this depth.
Wait for a week or two for the heap to decompose to half its height.
Next plant Sweat potato seeding tubers into the heap at about 500mm separation and that the tubers are just covered by the lawn clippings.
A little water applied now to each tuber.
Harvest in 3 months, carefully remove cover soil by following the runners back to the centre of the plant.
And what a pleasant surprise.
Notice the tubers are cocooned in a white fluffy fungus. This was apparently a protective coating for the tuber a Botanist advised.
On lifting the tubers out they would excrete glistening crystal clear due drops from their skin, not sure why fascinating.
Best of all the tubers had not been attacked by borer insects.
From just two tubers planted and harvested 3 months later, fantastic.
This was all done on hard ground and grown in a temperate late spring climate.
Hope you found this article informative and especially intriguing regarding the fungus cocoon.
