Kitchen Garden Forum

Not really, they even don't grow.

giar500 you are dong really well with your Kiwano & now your sweet potatoes as well. I am hoping mine will catch up but I obviously won't get the same sized fruit as last year as the poor little blighters were disturbed so regularly, but they will be liking this heat & starting to vine nicely so should get a spurt on - fingers crossed anyway!

What other interesting things are you growing?

Westi wrote:What other interesting things are you growing?

Colocasia Esculenta (mentioned in other thread) - quite good results (but it's first time, so I don't know yet what final result should I expect) and chinese yam ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_yam) - moderate result, but I hope I will get some crop next year, as they shouuld be able to survive winter and continue growing next year.

And also quinoa with good result, this year I planted much more.

Well, flowers on all of them:





But I don't know, is that good or bad. I want bulbs, not flowers. Nobody gets them flowering in most cases.

Jealous! Where is your patch?

Closer look to flowers:


They look pretty nice, don't you think? As I heard, it's rare to get sweet potato blossom. Well, but apparently, possible.

Hmm, it seems flowering is not good: https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/outdo ... ce-flowers because it affects tubers size, that's what I've suspected. I rather need to remove flowers.

My good crop from last year flowered but I still got huge tubers which stored really well!

Good indeed, similar size as the one available to buy. And, you have variety I am missing - red skin and orange flesh, it's quite rare to buy in my country.

Btw one variety I have is very fast growing one, even 2 times faster than others, I am not sure, but tubers are very similar to "Hannah" or "O'Henry", very rare to buy as well: https://www.saveur.com/gallery/16-Shades-of-Sweet/ it seems they even don't need high temperature to grow well (unlike others)

Cheers for the link Giaur500! Where is your growing spot btw? I'm southern Dorset in the UK, not much luck outside but since I got the tunnel it has provided the moistness & humidity this variety seems to like. Shame the rules are in force from where you can buy from - even the USA site I buy squash & pumpkin from can no longer send to the UK! Luckily I saved some seed but they weren't good storers!

Westi wrote:Cheers for the link Giaur500! Where is your growing spot btw?

Eastern Poland

Westi wrote:I'm southern Dorset in the UK, not much luck outside but since I got the tunnel it has provided the moistness & humidity this variety seems to like.

All my attempts are only outside, but I'm thinking about greenhouse. Although, from my experience, outdoor is always better as long as weather conditions are hospitable. This year my summer weather conditions are not much different than yours, it even seems your summer is more hot. I started at the end of March, indoor of course with first slips. They were mature when planted to solid ground, that was first week of June. That's the only chance to get any result outside. However, I also got "Hannah" (probably) variety and first small slips planted directly to ground at the middle of June and final result is almost the same, so this variety grows much faster.

Westi wrote:Shame the rules are in force from where you can buy from - even the USA site I buy squash & pumpkin from can no longer send to the UK! Luckily I saved some seed but they weren't good storers!

Well, I don't even bother to find any special stores. As always, I used fruits from market, they sell them for eat. But you never know which variety is that actually in this case. My plan this year to try to start slips at the end of summer and try to keep them alive to next spring, so I will have mature plants ready to grow.

"My plan this year to try to start slips at the end of summer and try to keep them alive to next spring, so I will have mature plants ready to grow."

I was growing slips around feb/march this year had loads planted on into pots & left in green house but weather was not good for putting them outside so grew another lot may ish and planted out using idea from Alan Titchmarsh show. This is current result from 6 slips....

Main problem is that edible tubers form market don't want to grow eaisly, it takes very long time and most of them are rather going to decay, without creating any slips. From your experience, are your own tubers better? I suspect some kind of chemical preparatrion has been used on fruits available to buy to prevent them from growing and that's the reason why it's so hard to create slips from them.

While regular purple or orange bulbs are widely available (especially orange ones are easy to buy), my fastest growing variety is very rare, I am pretty sure I may not find it again to buy, so I am looking for the best way to don't lost it - I need either to create slips from bulb, or create slips now from vines and keep them alive until next spring (which is not so easy).

In the past tried growing slips from shop brought potato without success.

Got "3x ORGANIC tuber Japanese White Flesh Sweet Potato for slips" off ebay from Bulgaria. At £3.90 including postage thought I had nothing to loose.

These were still producing slips well into June, should have keep them rather than putting in compost to see how long they would keep.

Colin2016 wrote:In the past tried growing slips from shop brought potato without success.

Yes, that's what I am talking about. If you try just to put them to water or ground, no chance for success. I bought from shop on November 2019. After 3 months, 90% of them decayed. Small green shoots appeared on 3 bulbs (after almost 4 months!), so I put bulbs to water and got slips. Then they started to grow very fast. From what you said, clean (without any preparation used on them) bulbs should grow much better.