Kitchen Garden Forum

Well, 2 ways posible. First, most common - grow from slips. Slips grow from morher bulb, then you need to remove them from mother and let them to create their own roots, either in water then move to ground, or in ground directly (but there must be very hot and wet soil).

Second approach is similar to potato growing. You can place mother bulb to ground and let it to create its own roots and leaves and don't remove slips, although that may fail and very often mother bulb is going to decay and it takes very long time until mother starts to grow. From other side, it grows from mother much faster and it keeps creating much more roots and leaves.

Complicated little lovelies, it is a wonder we tamed them enough to grow in the UK. I'm pretty sure the 1st option is only going to be the one to get a crop but I like an experiment & thinking I could find a spot in the tunnel to do a trial of a whole mother planted as I'm in the 'tropical end of England'! (OK just missed 'tropical for real' by a few thousand miles)! Thank you giaur500! Appreciate your input & sharing your knowledge!

What I did - mother bulb has created many slips, I removed 5 of them, and let them to root. Then I also placed mother bulb to ground and now it keeps growing,.as well as the slips. Mother bulb grows way faster, than young slips so far, bigger leaves.

April 15th, from slips, purple skin and flesh variety:


Now:



June 6th, from slips, white flesh variety:


Now:



Bulb used to get slips (June 6h) grows outdoor too:

Last evening I made a chicken & sweet potato risotto with my very last from last year's crop & all OK despite not the best storage, but deffo hardened off from last years Indian Summer! Yesterday I went back to ridge & trough planting of this years guys who are struggling on individual mounds (mainly thanks to mole interference), they had a good root run & had to dig big holes to re-locate them. I note you plant yours on the flat & no sign of extra watering set up! Can you share more about you're watering regime?

Thanks in advance!

Westi wrote:Can you share more about you're watering regime?

Nothing special, only keep soil wet. The one that grows from mother bulb, no watering at all, but soil at the bottom of the hole was wet to make sure roots won't be dry.

Individual mounds/ridges are intended to harvest more eaisly, without the risk of any damage of tubers. They have nothing to do with watering. Maybe I should do that too, but now it's too late. On the flat ground, it's more inconvienient to dig out tubers. No moles in my garden, but much ants instead, they are not able to make any big damage, but still problematic

Not bad:



How is yours?

They are well happier since I got one of those sonic mole repellers! Poor little blighters were right in the mole's path & have definitely been checked, but weather improving & getting warmer & fortunate work shifts to find them before they perished! As a result they are still small but I have to re-plant them as they are in a trough not a ridge to get them out of the mole path! I'm sure they won't appreciate another move but small enough to cope I think! I will take pics tomorrow as I've been re-miss in the pics as the 'to do' list did not include the mole or the high winds snapping plants; so list went out the window with repair & re-sow & repel!

Fortunatelly, I have no moles. But weather sucks currently, it's cold - max 20 °C day and below 10 °C night. They say it's going to be warmer after 07/20, I hope it will happen. June was very warm though

Would they grow in a large container? I only have a Patio Garden as the previous owners had a caravan and totally paved the back of the house.

Best wishes and those are awesome sweet pots

Debs

daxtell71 wrote:Would they grow in a large container?

Why not? But still you need to prepare some room, because they are going to creep around. Or you can try with some kind of trellis to save space

Westi wrote:I will take pics tomorrow

So, where is your pics?

I grew them in buckets last year not a major success got loads of roots and few small potatoes.

This year am growing them in a cold frame, they seem happy at the moment.

I got flowers, look:


Intetesting, but this variety grows very poor, I guess that's because it's too cold. It produced flowers instead.

That's what they should look like!