This year's sweet potatoes, and curing them

So it seems that 6 sweet potato plants, in a 100-gallon grow bag (48" diameter x 12" tall) was a pretty good ratio. I haven't weighed the exact amount I pulled out of the dirt, this past weekend, but it was enough sweet potatoes, to pretty much fill a box, 15" wide x 18" long x 12" tall.

Okay, so now that I've successfully grown the darn things, I have to find a way to "cure" them! Curing sweet potatoes turns the carbohydrates into sugars, and helps seal up any imperfections/cuts in them, and should be done in an area with 80 to 90 degree F heat, and 80 to 90 percent humidity. A cured sweet potato is typically good for ~4 to 6 months, stored at ~50 degrees Fahrenheit. So how am I going to accomplish this?

Luckily, I had purchased a small pop-up "greenhouse", a couple years ago, that seemed custom made for this purpose. So I set it up in my storage area inside the house, lined the bottom with a couple of cheap terrycloth towels, and set up a small ceramic heater, and a jar with water. I suspended a hand towel from the top of the enclosure, with the end in the jar, so it would wick the water up, where the hot air blowing from the heater will blow across it, increasing the humidity inside the tent. Added a combination thermometer/hygrometer, and put the harvested sweet potatoes inside, after giving them a brush with a soft bristle brush, to remove most of the dirt.

It's been 3 days now, and everything seems to be working perfectly! Knock on wood, to keep from jinxing it, of course!! The heater thermostat is set to maintain the temperature, and the humidity is sitting right where I needed it.

Figured I'd share the idea here, in case anyone else has considered growing some sweets. Everything I've read, about curing them, says to keep them this way for 5-6 days, so I figure come Friday morning, I'll kill the power to the heater, and allow the tent to cool back down to room temperature. Then comes the challenge, on how to store them in the best temperature, so they'll last long enough for me to eat them all!

 

Sounds like you pretty much have a plan. Let us know how it all turns out.

 

My grandparents used to just wash them , carefully place them in a basket so they don't get bruised and have air move thru them , and kept them in an outdoor shaded shed on a concrete floor. They kept their sweet taters and red taters . 'Course you may not have that shed. A basement may work.

 

Great harvest. You had better success then I did at growing sweet potatoes.

 

We grow a few bushels every year. Covington is our current favorite variety for orange color and great taste. We cure ours on wood/wire racks in the greenhouse, then move to the basement or root cellar. By the way, they will store a year easy....still have potatoes from last year, though many have sprouts.

 

Yeah, sadly, in Texas (in an area with a high water table), no basement, or storm cellar. Was actually wondering how high one could adjust the thermostat, on a small refrigerator, to maintain that 50-60 degree temp....and what the energy cost would be, to do so?

Then it occurred to me.....wine cooling fridge. Just about perfect, with temperature control from 40 to 60 degrees, like this one:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Frigidaire-34-Bottle-Capacity-Black-Freestanding-Wine-Chiller/1000007618

Guess I'll peruse the local want ads, and Craigslist.

 

Far cheaper than a wine fridge, and more versatile, as you can turn any freezer into a fridge unit (we do so with an 18cf upright freezer to hold chickens over night at fridge temps before cutting up/bagging/freezing.....or when making brine cured hams or bacon and the crock needs to stay in the 35-40 degree range for a couple weeks) is a thermostat unit like this;



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MDSWXY4/?tag=survivalmonke-20

You plug this unit in the wall, plug your freezer into the 'cool' outlet (has uses for the heat outlet as well if you need well controlled heat up to 1100w......say a light bulb in a well house to prevent freezing for example) and it shuts off power to the freezer when the set temp is reached.....and at 50-60 degrees, the freezer won't hardly ever run.

 

Now that's a cool little gadget there. Never seen one of them.

 

That could very well be used for temperature control for curing hanging meat as well.

 

Yeah....like I said, lot of uses for it, making it way more versatile than a wine fridge. If you want an ULTRA-low electric fridge (say in a limited electric supply situation), plug one on a small chest freezer and make it a refrigerator.....100watt/hr day unit versus 10 times that on even a small dorm type fridge.

 

Thanks, TnAndy. Will definitely check it out. I would still need a small freezer, but could probably find a used one of those, cheaper than a wine chiller unit.

So the sweets came out of the curing "room" this morning. I actually turned off the heater yesterday, and let the enclosure air out. Definitely didn't want to be in that room, for a while, as the humidity peaked pretty quickly, with the door open on the enclosure!

Here's the end result. Seems as though the bigger potatoes seemed to do better than the small ones. I'll probably take one of the little ones, later today (for dinner), and heat it up in the oven, to see how it tastes. Got some squash that need cooking, too, so adding a small item to that cooking tray won't be a big deal.

I included the tape measure on the first pic, to give you an idea of just how enormous some of these things turned out to be! Like I said, I'll likely be eating sweet potatoes, all winter long....and still have some left over, for seeding! 2nd and 3rd photos are taken at right angles, to give you a better idea of the bountiful harvest.

 

No, actually it was pretty crappy soil....clay and shale mix. I cleared a spot below the house for new garden space in 2012 and the only advantage it had over the other garden space was almost no rocks....even though it was just a rock's throw from the other garden !


Sweet potatoes actually don't do well in rich soil....all goes to tops instead of the potato. Over the last 6 years, I've added 40 tons of sand, lot of manures and a cover crop each winter plowed under in spring. Soil is starting to look better, but it's been an uphill fight.

2013 or so