Sweet Potato Project In Appleton, WI

I like a challenge. Or a dare. To me it is the same. I really do not know how it started. Most likely it was a conversation with my lovely wife Jodi while enjoying an adult beverage. We decided we wanted to grow sweet potatoes. So I began to research it.

For those of you that spent any time growing or researching sweet potato growing, you know that sweet potatoes really are not meant to be grown in zone 5 in Appleton, WI. They are tropical. It is not supposed to happen. Sure, some clever people have had some success. So I thought if they could do it, so could I.

The first year of this experiment started on my parent’s farm in Sturgeon Bay, WI. I was excited when the package of sweet potato slips showed up at my front door. But, they looked next to death. I was not too worried, I had previously gotten strawberry plants that looked just as bad and soon those strawberry plants were thriving in the soil. So I loaded up and went to the farm.

Now when you do SOME research, and then you apply your typical arrogance, generally things do not go well. That was how the first year experiment went. Rather than fully understanding the needs of sweet potatoes, I just stuck the slips in the ground and hoped for the best. Sure, I built up the soil. Sure I watered them. But then life happened and I did not see them again. Seriously. I was traveling for work and three weeks later when I went to check on the garden, they were gone. Dead and decayed, gone.

Fast forward to December. Again, enjoying a typical conversation and refreshment with my wife, we decided to give it another go. This time, Jodi reminded me that we saw videos on rooting sweet potatoes in a Jar. Actually, she knew how to do this anyway, the reference to videos was to just humor me. We just happened to have a store bought sweet potato in the pantry, and of course we had plenty of mason jars. Why not. It wasn't like we had much else to do in the middle of winter.

After a couple weeks of soaking that sweet potato in the jar, we started to see roots. Then came shoots. EXCITED! We kept it in the jar and trained the shoots to grab on to the curtain rods. Soon, this was getting a little out of control. We then planted it in a large pot of planting mix and it exploded. We placed in the southern window of our dining room, the plant was thriving. Soon I had to apply a little Belgian Engineering (My term for crazy things nobody else would ever come up with, refers to my family heritage). I needed to keep these growing vines in the window. The application of some garden string to the curtain rods and a little web weaving created an unattractive but effective trellis.

Looking ahead, we needed to figure out a way to make this work. We were going to have plenty of slips, but how to make them grow in the garden. I had been experimenting with raised garden boxes. I then built one that I think is going to be deep enough to handle the below ground magic. The best part of this idea is that the sun helps to heat the soil. Raised up out of the ground, this was my best chance to grow these.

We planted a number of slips in the spring. The picture above is the result. I have been feeding it regularly with worm casting tea (more on this in a future post). We know that we have some tiny sweet potatoes from when we transferred the mother plant into the garden box also. However, we really do not know how it is going underground. Based on the above ground growth, we are feeling pretty positive.

I will update this post when we harvest. I just hope we get to maturity!