by Noel | Mar 31, 2025 | CobraHead
About 30 years ago I accidentally left some sweet potatoes in the basement well past their one year maximum shelf life. The potatoes were wrapped in newspaper in a relative dry environment. As I unwrapped the potatoes I found they were dehydrating and all the potatoes had put out sprouts, which, for lack of light, were pale pink or red, but were indeed, totally alive little sweet potato vines, feeding off the mother plant. I realized these sprouts would be easy to...
by Noel | Apr 7, 2020 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
I plant 17 or 18 sweet potatoes plants every year. For the past quite a few years I’ve started my sweet potatoes using sprouts from 2-year-old roots purposely allowed to sprout in the basement. This year, I had a request from our son Geoff, who is in New Haven, Connecticut, for some starts for a community garden he works with, and I also started a few for a friend who lives close by. Under Plastic Normally, I start one box of 25, but this year, we’re going...
by Noel | Apr 16, 2018 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
I’ve been starting my sweet potatoes from sprouted old roots rather than starting from new potatoes for quite a few years, now. It’s a close to fool-proof method. Here are 25 sprouts in a soil box. I removed the sprouts from the mother plants and cut them into handleable sections before shoving them into the soil. Note that many of the sprouts have already leafed out while still attached to the mother root. Some, however, are just pink sprouts that will quickly...
by Noel | Mar 28, 2018 | CobraHead, Gardening
I used to start my sweet potatoes like this, in a cup or jar of water. Now I don’t start them at all. I just let some old potatoes sprout on their own and plant the sprouts. I haven’t started sweet potatoes either in water or soil for quite a few years. After I realized that old sweet potatoes almost always put out viable sprouts on their own after about a year and a half, a discovery of leaving some in storage far too long, I just keep a few potatoes around to...
by Noel | Oct 17, 2017 | CobraHead, Gardening
We harvested 89 pounds of sweet potatoes yesterday. That’s not a record, but it’s well above our normal yield, and we’re happy with the results. Our average sweet potato yield is about 80 pounds per bed. We grow a variety named Jewel (sometimes spelled Jewell). We’ve been growing Jewel from our own starts for over 10 years and we find it excellent for both yield and long-term storage, and they taste great, too! The potatoes were grown in...
