Thursday, January 19, 2017

Sweet Potato Tower

YouTuber "A Day Late" gardener in Virginia shares his experience growing sweet potatoes in a homemade vertical tower. I think his 35 pound harvest of sweet potatoes is excellent!



His comments about the vertical tower:

"Overall the work and maintenance to grow this was rather low. Most of the work was in setting it up and shoveling in the dirt. Harvesting was a breeze and was literally just unwrapping the fencing and pushing the dirt over to remove the potatoes."

His advice for "curing" the sweet potatoes:

"When digging your potatoes you need to be careful with the tubers. Be gentle and take care not to bruise or rip the delicate outer skin. Lightly brush off clumps of dirt and lay out in the sunlight for a day. It's ok to have some dirt on the tuber, and this little bit of dirt will dry up. Sweet potatoes need to cure before you store or prepare them to eat. It's recommended to place them in a dry dark area at about 85 degrees (F) for 10 days. Then after that store them in a dark cool place."

I grew sweet potatoes in a raised bed, but was slightly disappointed in the results because I didn't make it deep enough. As you can see from the tower constructed by "A Day Late" the sweet potatoes used up every bit of the tower. I'm going to try this method.

While he doesn't giver step-by-step instructions on how to construct it, most anyone can reverse engineer it by watching him take it apart. 

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