Monday, October 4, 2010

Harvest Monday : The Verdict is in - To Trim or Not to Trim Sweet Potato Vines

I decided to harvest the sweet potatoes in the corner yard this afternoon. I looked up on the blog and realized that I pulled them the same day last year so my experiment would be perfect.
Last year I did not trim the sweet potato vines and got this for a harvest
Small and pitiful was my opinion. There were two out of the whole batch that were baking size.
This year, I put them in the same box with the same growing conditions and got THIS!!
The largest one wasn't a sweet potato so much as it was the size of a new born baby!
Most of these will most likely have to be turned into a pie or mashed or something because they're too large to eat, but man, are they awesome. It's about 11 pounds of sweet potatoes from two slips which doesn't hurt my feelings one bit.
I don't even think there is a debate that needs to be had. I know the more roots a sweet potato plant sends down the more chance it has for tubers, but if you trim, the energy goes to a fewer tubers instead, making them larger. I'm a fan of trimming those vines, my friends. Hop on over to Daphne's to see what everyone else is harvesting!
Two new keychains went up on the Keychains for a Cause page today.
The grey is for brain cancer Awareness and Diabetes and Asthma Awareness,

and the green is for kidney cancer awareness, missing children awareness and many other causes.

The morning comes early. Sweet potato dreams!

BTW, any good sweet potato recipes that call for MONSTERS you'd like to share would be much appreciated!

12 comments:

  1. Oh My! That is a size of a baby! Wow!! Love it.

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  2. That's huge! Trimming it is then.

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  3. Wow....those are some lovely sweet potatoes!!

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  4. Nice harvest! Thw wife took some of our large ones and made a dish with marshmallows on top yesterday evening - and it was yummy!

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  5. Well I personally have an aversion (it sickens me, actually!) to anything sweet on top of sweet potatoes, so here's what hubby does: cuts them into fry-like huge wedges and drops them in the turkey fryer on Turkey Day and we drizzle them with a butter/garlic sauce and sea/kosher salt - YUM!!!

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  6. My sweet potatoes were carrot sized. So next year more sun, and I'll trim the vines. Thanks for the advice

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  7. Very good to know! For when I get around to trying to grow sweet potatoes!

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  8. That is truly an impressive sweet potato harvest! No recipes to offer as my husband absolutely HATES them so I never cook them and don't bother growing them. I do like them though - but have to enjoy them at someone else's house.

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  9. VERY AWESOME! You and EG are like sweet potato royalty.

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  10. I've been thinking about planting some sweet potatoes for next year, but never thought about trimming the vines until I saw this post. Thanks for doing the experiment and letting us know the results!

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  11. Man, I don't think I want to trim. I had taters that size as it was. (Maybe a later season trimming would help the newer small tubers size up??)

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  12. I like big too. It is so much easier to prepare big ones in the garden. But when they get too big they are hard to cook except by cutting them up.

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