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So now, we're going to talk about sweet potatoes
and why you should be growing them.
One of the reasons is because this tuber is
one of the healthiest tubers.
And the second reason, the greens
from the sweet potato, they're like the top of the food chain
when it comes to leafy greens.
They have more antioxidants.
They have more vitamins, folic acid.
And in our culture, we don't eat them.
We throw them away.
But all of these are edible, and it
could be one of the most healthiest thing
in your garden.
That's why you should be growing it.
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I'm going to show you how to plant
these are a bunch of different ways because you can.
You can plant them from the spuds that are growing on them,
you can plant them from the vines that are growing,
and you can cut the potato up and start from there.
I'm sure in school, you guys probably did this experiment
where you put toothpicks in the sweet potato,
and then you put it in the jar and watched it grow like this.
But what they never told us was to put this in the ground.
You can see, a day or so ago, we put this in some water,
and it had no green on it.
Now, if you look closely, you can
see that there has been green leaves that are coming up
just from a day in the water.
So what will happen to this potato
with all of these spuds growing on it?
If you put this in the ground just like it is, it will grow,
and what will happen is this will decompose in the ground.
But all of this will give you new growth.
Also, another way you can do it, You can see the green here.
You can plant these.
So that you can put these straight in the soil.
Same thing, you can-- if you want,
you can put this whole thing in the ground,
and it might even get more spuds on it.
But also, the vines, if you see these nodes, these get roots.
So literally, I can cut this.
And you can put these in water, and they'll start rooting.
You can even put them in soil, and they will start rooting.
And you can plant these in the ground.
And also you can--
when you do get some potatoes that are ready to harvest,
you can leave a couple in the ground.
But even if I take this off, this will grow,
and you will have a ton of sweet potatoes from this.
You see it has-- it's rooted-- it has roots on it.
This was the base that it came off,
so there were other sweet potatoes
attached to this sweet potato.
And it's ready to go already.
It's there.
The thing I love about this is since it's a tuber,
it's growing underground, so you literally
can plant on top of this.
What I do, I plant sunflowers, I plant corn,
and different green vegetables on top of these
since they're in the ground.
And a lot of times, those other things
that you're planting on top, the roots,
they don't go down that far to disrupt
the growth of the sweet potato.
And then what you also get is the leafy greens.
It becomes a cover crop for the soil,
which that protects the soil.
So that's another reason that you should plant these.
And you can see here where this has been out for--
I don't know-- maybe five, six days,
and you can see that it's still growing.
So I could cut this up and take these vines and put them in,
but-- or I could just do this.
I want to show you how easy this is, and these
are going to multiply.
Same thing with this, it's this simple.
They're resilient, and they will keep coming back forever.
The kind of soil that sweet potatoes prefer
is like a lonely, looser, rich soil.
And you want it, too.
You don't want to really have them in a clay soil
because it's harder for them to grow, and it's harder for you
to get them.
But if you have a nice, loamy soil like this,
it's butter because you can just move the soil with your hand,
and you can find sweet potatoes.
And here, we generally plant in the summer, and you
can harvest them in the winter because we always--
there's always a crop around Thanksgiving time
of sweet potatoes.
It's best to plant these in either a potato sack,
and you can find a potato sack online,
or I've even put them in--
I've doubled coffee bags, you know,
the bags that you buy, the big, you know,
50 pound bags of coffee.
You can get those because they throw them away.
So you just double them up and put them in soil
and then put these in there.
And I just happen to have an example under here
that I can show you.
So a lot of roasters, they have these, and it's waste for them.
So if you go to towns like LA now or Seattle,
there's thousands of these.
And what a lot of people-- what a lot of gardeners
use these for, they use them for ground cover in their garden
or they'll use them for weed cloth to block weeds out,
and these break down into the soil.
It's good.
So what I do for--
I've done for potatoes, I'll double these,
and I'll fill them with soil.
And then I roll it down where I have--
like this, so it's not so big.
And then I'll drop the soil in here,
and I'll put the potatoes in here.
So when they're ready, you can just cut this,
or you can open the bottom and the potatoes just fall out.
And my thing is I don't waste anything.
So this is a resource.
It's not trash.
So let's recap.
There are a ton of ways to plant sweet potatoes.
To give them a head start, it's a good idea
to put them in water until they sprout.
Once they've sprouted, you can cut off the sprouts
and plant them, or you can even throw the whole thing
in the ground.
Another way is to cut the vine off an existent plant,
put it in water until the node sprout,
and then put that in the ground.
One of my favorite ways to grow them
is to fill an old coffee bag with soil
and use that as a container.
But whether planting in the ground or using a bag,
make sure they have nice, loamy soil
so the tubers don't have to fight to thrive.
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Standard knowledge is that it takes you three to four months
to grow potatoes to this size.
I think it depends on where you're at, what kind of climate
you're in, and what kind of soil because it's varied vastly
for me, from four months to six months
to grow these kind of potatoes.
This is one of the plants also that sometimes when it's ready,
it will shoulder, and that means, like onions and garlic
and beets and things like that, they
shoulder when they're ready.
Shouldering is a way that plants--
some plants, some root crops--
they tell you that they're ready because onions literally
will come out of the ground.
Carrots, they shoulder.
They'll come out of the ground and tell you
that they're ready.
Beets, they do it.
Garlic does it.
And a lot of times, like this, a sweet potato
will be just like this, on top of the soil.
It will come out like that, and you-- let's--
see that?
That's how they grow.
With sweet potatoes, to harvest them,
another thing is the leaves go brown, and they get a flower.
So after that flower dies back, that's
kind of when you know there's tubers underground.
And you shouldn't dig them all up.
You should search and say, OK, what can I find in here?
Because there is going to be these red roots that you're
going to see above ground, and that's how you know a tuber
is under there like this one.
So you can tell the color of the leaves start changing,
but you can also see there's still
a lot of green leaves on this particular sweet potato.
And what-- for home gardeners, what I would suggest you
guys do is get a gardening fork.
And if you keep your soil nice like this and conditioned
and you have a lot of compost and a lot of organic matter,
first of all, you're going to get bigger potatoes
because the potatoes don't have to fight against the soil.
But you're also going to be able to dig with your hands
to start.
And so once you notice the roots,
once you notice the leaves changing, I dig around.
And then, like, this potato was on top.
And once you-- they usually don't
grow only one potato attached.
They usually have a group of potatoes attached.
So you want to take the big ones and put the small ones back
into the ground.
That way, they keep growing for you.
When you come back later on, you can
go to the part of the vine that is in the ground.
And then you dig around, and you see-- and you can--
you start to feel it.
And just like this, bam.
And that's how, in home gardens, that you find them.
But like I was saying with the potato sack method or bag
method, when the leaves start changing and dying back
and you can just cut that back, and they'll just fall out.
And you don't have to do all the work like this.
You don't have to get your nails dirty.
Mani, pedi, please.
Depending on where you live, it typically
takes about four months for sweet potatoes
to reach maturity, and there are a bunch of ways
you can tell they're ready.
The first is to look for changes in the color of the leaf.
Once they go yellow, it's a good sign that they're ready.
Another way is when they shoulder,
and you can see the top of the potato popping out
of the ground by the base of the vine.
You can also tell a potato is mature
when you see the little red roots coming out of the soil.
When harvesting, take only the biggest ones off the vine.
Let the smaller ones continue growing,
and then come back for them later.
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