Sweet Potato Varieties?

I just got the Sand Hill Preservation seed catalogue and I was looking at their sweet potatoes; they have about a million varieties! How would one choose? Any recommendations out there? I like them moist, orange, and fairly sweet.

By your criteria: Bush Porto Rico, Carolina Ruby, Centennial, Copper Jewel, Darby, Georgia Jet, Georgia Red, Golden Jewel, Oklahoma Red, Vardaman, Willow leaf.

Thanks, Farmer Dill! How many slips does one buy? They sell them in lots of six. We would want enough to store over the winter; are all the ones you named good keepers, too?

If things go as planned, you can expect anywhere from 2-4 usable taters per plant. So figure out how many times you expect to eat them per week, how many eaters, and you can get a rough estimate from there.

I don't know about particular varieties' keeping qualities, but I do know that long term storage is dependent upon good curing, good storage conditions, and the amount of grub damage. (And digging out damage. Small dings may heal, but big dings have to be eaten first.)

I irrigated too much this past hot season, and every grub for miles showed up to enjoy the moist conditions and plentiful chow. I cured & stored most of them anyway, and have been eating them, but I'm having to cull & compost alot. Lesson learned.

I grow the Beaureguards & Carolina Rubys. (Rubies? LOL) I find I prefer the vine over bush~ but it's always good to try out a few different ones at first.

I purchase Vardaman sweet potatoes from here:

http://www.newhopeseed.com/
http://www.newhopeseed.com/vardaman_sweetpotato.html

$28.00 for 50 slips including shipping and handling.

Last fall I dug around 300lbs of sweets - we are still eating them despite giving many away. I keep them stored in wicker baskets.

Most of the keep pretty well. They will sprout late in the spring, But I usually have usable potatoes well into June. The Porto Rico is very moist and sweet. The only problem I have encountered is the soil borne disease scurf to which this variety is very susceptible. More modern varieties have more disease resistant. Beauregard is todays most prevalent market sweet potato and has helped put the Loisianna growers back in business. North Carolina which dominated for a while with Jewel is quite active in introducing new competive varieties. This is the Golden Jewel, I prefer the Copper Jewel/AKA New Jewel, but both are good potatoes. As Nedweenie stated above, The number of plants depends on your usuage. 50 plants will give me a couple of bushels. A good yield will be 6-8 bakers per hill, but sometimes one does not get the optimum yield. They are pretty carefree if you can keep deer, rabbits etc off the vines. seems to be their favorite food. Voles will also do a number on the roots.
I do often get sweet potato slips from sandhill as other suppliers tend to have a limited selection. But they ship so late I only get a few to trial. IF they do fairly well, I start my own plants the next year. If I wish numbers for production I get them from Georges Plant Farm http://www.tatorman.com/ or Steele plants http://www.sweetpotatoplant.com/potatoes.html. Other suppliers include New Hope and Duck Creek, which I have not used. Sometimes local feed and seeds will carry plants but seem to have stopped in recent years. Most of them are vendors for Bonnie plants which only supplies Beauregard.

This message was edited Jan 22, 2011 10:50 AM

I had forgotten about the Vole invasion! Yes, they took their share of the sweet potatoes. But, it kept them from eating the soybeans and green beans!

I've killed two Voles in my house so far this winter!

Uh-oh, I think we have a major vole problem. I scolded my cat all summer; I had voles running under the aluminum roofing panels I had put down on my paths to smother weeds (that worked, by the way.).

I think I'd still like to try growing sweet potatoes. We did that a number of years ago and had a good yield, and anything that we can't eat is good for deer bait.

greenhouse_gal - From what I have read, Voles don't come to the surface very often, which is perhaps why kitty didn't get 'em!

I'm hoping black snakes are hibernating under my lean-to through winter - they'll hunt down Voles for dinner!

I'd highly recommend 'Beauregard' sweet potatoes. They produce fully mature sweets in only 50 days, and can be HUGE, up to 5 and 6 lbs each, but are usually smaller. Even the huge ones are tender and sweet. They keep well until spring. I get at least 4 large sweets per slip, but usually with another half dozen smaller, but usable ones. Very disease resistant (never had a problem yet), and vigorous.

Honeybee, black snakes I've got aplenty. I had some living in the walls of my studio when we remodeled it. I don't mind them at all.

Hoosier, I keep hearing good things about Beauregard.

I am assuming that I would be considered a northern grower, even though we would be south of the Mason-Dixon line if it were to be continued eastward.

greenhouse_gal - I did a search "attracting black snakes to garden" - and found a thread right here on Dave's Garden! This place is the BEST!

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1080069/

I wrote to a local company that removes snakes from peoples property and asked if they would be willing to bring me any black snakes they captured. Their answer was that they would remove my troublesome Voles for $500 with a 30 day guarantee that they would not return!

IDIOTS!

And just HOW would they remove them, pray tell. Besides, thirty days isn't enough to allow my potager to grow!

RE: Snake "removal"

A few years ago, my mother-in-law moved into a retirement complex on a small lake with a woods. Many of the older ladies freaked out when they saw harmless black snakes basking in the sun on their patios, so they hired an exterminator. Very sad, as they killed dozens of snakes over the next weeks. But guess what? After a few months, they had a literal invasion of mice, voles, and even a few rats in the apartments. To this day, they have serious rodent problems. Serves them right!

Do they realize why, I wonder?

They probably didn't "connect the dots", but I sure told my MIL about it, and she spread the word. She moved a year later, so I'm not sure how it worked out.

HoosierGreen - reading things like this makes me want to cry :( If only people would learn to leave things out there alone!

I had a large garter snake in the white potatoes this past season and one in the sweetpotatoes the year before.

I like the O'Henry yellow sweetpotatoes. I'm not a fan of the mushy orange ones I guess. I have raised a lot of Beauregards, but didn't eat much on them.

Do the yellow ones cook up differently? Not sure what you mean by mushy.

Most of the yellow fleshed potatoes have drier flesh. The white ones even more so almost most like an Irish potato with sugar on them. The traditional orange fleshed potato has very moist flesh, almost like honey drips out of them when baked. Beuregard and Hernandez are not the best eating of the orange flesh potatoes which is why I did not include them in the original recommendations.

I ended up ordering 12 Tennessee Top Mark and 12 Willowleaf; I decided that semi-bush varieties might work better for us, and I wanted one early and one mid-season so we could space out the harvest, if those designations were accurate. I was also looking for "excellent yield" in their descriptions and both had that.

Anyone ever try Tennessee Top Mark?

Farmerdill: Is there an early-maturing variety you could recommend? That's the reason I plant 'Beauregard', and it always seems to bake and cook up sweet, but then of course I don't have anything to compare them too, except lousy store-bought ones!

greenhouse_gal: Which of the ones you got is the early maturing one, and how many days to maturity?

Willowleaf is the early one. It's an heirloom variety described as large, semi-bush, cut leaf, light orange skin and flesh, excellent yield.

Tennessee Top Mark is mid-season. It's an heirloom variety described as semi-bush, cut leaf, dark pink skin and pale orange flesh, excellent yield.

Sand Hill doesn't give days to maturity because they say that's too variable depending on conditions and soil.

Of the ones Farmer Dill recommended based on the preferences I mentioned, the early ones are Centennial, Copper Jewel, Georgia Jet although Sand Hill doesn't like those because it cooks up mushy and doesn't have the flavor or resistance to cracking of some of the others, and Willowleaf.

This message was edited Jan 24, 2011 12:01 PM

Willow leaf is not bad, although it does not yield or have flavor of a good orange flesh variety. Very similar to Carver. Have not grown Tennessee Top mark.

Willow Leaf

Oh, I chose that one because it was on the list you gave me. I thought you were recommending it.

I did and I grow it along with Carver. It is good, just does not have the more intense flavor of a Centennial, Jewel or Porto Rico. Like most "heirlooms" the potatoes are not as uniform as more recent commercial introductions or the yields quite as high. This one does quite well when compared to other heirlooms and vine is quite ornamental.

Have any of you grown the white varieties? I'm kind of tempted to try. Nancy Hall or White Triumph? Which would you choose?

Well, I'll try them out and see what I think. I don't care if they're not uniform. And next year I can always get something else. Thanks.

Nancy Hall is a yellow', and for a yellow a pretty good one. It has been at least 50 years since I grew one tho. It and Porto Rico (vining type) were the choices in my youth. It has more of a winter squash flavor. Of the whites I have grown Poplar Root ( a favorite in my Grandfathers time), Violetta, pretty and a decent producer, better flavor and texture than most whites, White Triumph/Choker, This one is as dry as some Irish potatoes. White Jewel , best on my taste buds, more moist than most whites.

Ignore the ornamental types which I do not grow, and this list will include the sweet potato varieties I have grown since 2005. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=sweet+potato&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&searcher%5Bgrex%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=with&Search=Search&offset=20

I just switched my order from Willowleaf to Copper Jewel; we'll see how that does for me.

Of white varieties....Many have less flavor than others and are drier. I cannot see growing a sweetpotato that tastes like an "Irish" potato when growing Irish potatoes is easier.

White Triumph for me produced about 12 small ones to the hill and frequently had scurf. I raised another white from Sand Hill that may have been Ivis.. It produced an extremely nice clump of smooth mid-sized "tubers" per hill.........Again, why raise sweetpotatoes that taste 'just' like Irish potatoes?

Nancy Hall is more coarse than O'Henry. If you like Nancy Hall, you will love O'Henry...very smooth texture.

This message was edited Jan 25, 2011 6:25 PM

Well, I thought I'd pick up a white as DH has suddenly discovered he likes sweet potatoes. I used to fix them for the kids, even made baby food with them, but he would never touch them. Went to a restaurant a week or so ago and he tried a baked sweet potatoe for the first time. He's asking me to give them a try in the garden and we thought we would try out a sampler package to see what we both like the best. Thought I'd ask for one of the white ones just to have a good mix the try out. So that's why I would grow a white sweet potato. I'm trying to get him more involved the the garden as I've always been to sole gardener in the family. Heavy stuff, hot stuff, fun stuff. I've been the one and enjoyed it. But, now that the kid are out of the house, I could use some help with the heavy stuff. If I can get him interested in some of the fun stuff, maybe it won't seem like work to him to help with the lifting, etc. Method to my madness =D!

Oh yeah... baked sweet potatoes are wonderful. We like them baked with butter and maple syrup. We also peel and slice them (about 3/4 inch thick), toss with olive oil, then bake them until tender. Yum.

I like them cooked in the microwave, then sliced about ¼" thick and fried in vegetable oil until toasted on both sides.

Clever combo cooking technique. I'll give it a try. It's interesting how sweet potatoes seem to be getting more popular in restaurants with the introduction of sweet potato fries, at least here in the Midwest. I think they came in with all the new barbecue places.

BAKED sweet potato fries are the bomb!

Where'd ya'll order sweeties from, pray tell?

I got mine from Sand Hill Preservation. They have a huge selection but don't give you that much information on each.

What I don't start myself, I order from Steele Plant Company.

http://www.sweetpotatoplant.com/

They don't have the variety that Sand Hill Preservation offers, though.

I was just reading through [again] Glenn Drowns recomendations for raising sweetpotatoes on the Sand Hill Preservation web site. He says a lot of very good things there about raising them. I do not fully agree with one thing though. He likes little rooting on the slips. Granted that sweetpotato slips are fairly hardy, I from experience prefer a bit shorter and stockier slips with a bit more rooting. I find that they then take off as soon as they hit the ground running and there is no mortality and can be set out at mid-[day.