sweet potatoes | Community Garden Coalition

A Message From our Board President, Lindsey Smith

Sweet potatoes. That humble root crop has been part of my community gardening story from the very beginning. And in many ways, they remind me of the Community Garden Coalition itself. Just as a sweet potato vine spreads its leaves to nourish the tubers beneath, the Coalition stretches its support to each member garden, supplying the compost, seeds, plants, water, and supplies our gardeners need to grow.

A gardener shows off the sweet potatoes she just harvested

A Unite4Health gardener

I didn’t even like sweet potatoes as a kid—perhaps because they were tied to a marshmallow-covered holiday casserole I really didn’t like. But fresh sweet potatoes dug right out of the garden just before the first frost? That’s an entirely different story.

More than a decade ago, I joined the Windsor Street garden as a somewhat novice gardener. I had two very small kids, and we commuted everywhere by bike and trailer. The garden sat a mile uphill from our house, so I knew I needed to choose something easy to care for because I wouldn’t get there every day. The Community Garden Coalition was giving away sweet potato slips, so I went with those. The kids helped me tuck the slips into the bed and mulch with straw. We visited every week that long, hot summer—watering occasionally but mostly watching the vines tumble and stretch across the bed. A little garter snake took up residence under the cool straw. When there wasn’t weeding to do in our own plot, I’d weed the community herb area while the kids ran around or played in the trees nearby. We met a few gardeners—Kathy Doisy, of course!—and Kip Kendrick, our neighbor and garden leader, who let us borrow tools from the shed across the street. One gardener introduced me to a heat-loving green I had never seen before: New Zealand “spinach,” which I still grow today.

a mother and school-age daughter pose in the garden with a box lid full of sweet potatoes

Unite4Health gardeners

By late October, as the days shortened and the kids started talking Halloween costumes, it was time to harvest. I biked up that hill one more time and we pulled back the thick mat of vines. I had never harvested sweet potatoes before, and tracing each vine to the cluster of fat, rust-colored tubers felt like uncovering buried treasure. The kids were thrilled to dig into the soil and pull out not one, not two, but sometimes five large sweet potatoes all nestled together. And it truly was treasure—we harvested nearly 50 pounds from that 4 x 8 plot of black gold. I had to leave them in a box to pick up by car because I couldn’t possibly bike home with two little kids and all those sweets!

We’ve grown sweet potatoes at our community garden plot (now at Friendship Garden Club) every year since. When the harvest is abundant, we share. When deer get at the vines or our attention is pulled elsewhere, we savor a smaller crop at Thanksgiving. No matter the year, the plant amazes me. Tended well, it reliably yields so much food.

A pair of gardeners standing in their sweetpotato patch hold up the first potato they harvested

Ninth Street gardeners

Our gardens do the same. They give us community, nourishment, healthy routines, and unexpected discoveries—of courage when challenges arise, of commitment to our food-insecure neighbors, of support when it’s needed most.

This time of year, as we participate in the COMO Gives campaign, we look to our larger community for that same support. Our all-volunteer board depends on community donations and small grants to keep our gardens growing. Every penny you give goes directly to seeds, plants, tools, mulch, compost, lawn mowers, sheds, and everything else that keeps our gardeners thriving.

Please consider a donation of any amount to the Community Garden Coalition through CoMoGives or through the donations page of our website during December, and help keep our sweet potato vines growing—both literally and figuratively.

A warm and happy New Year to you and yours, from all of us on the CGC Board.

Have you ever noticed that as you grow older you start to like foods that you thought you didn’t like at all? I sure have! One vegetable that I really didn’t like in my youth has gradually become a favorite of mine. What vegetable is it? Sweet potato!

cluster of sweet potatoes just pulled out of the ground

Sweet potatoes are related to the morning glory vine, and if you see some flowers on yours late in the season you will recognize the similarity. They are only distantly related to common potatoes and not at all related to true “yams.” They are believed to have originated in central or southern America and Columbus appears to have been the first to bring them to Europe (Wikipedia). By the time European colonists came to what is now the U.S., sweet potatoes were already a part of their gardening plans.

The reason I started growing them was curiousity. I had a little extra garden space, and my neighbor had some extra “slips.” Sweet potato slips are the rooted shoots from the tubers that are used to start a new crop. The CGC offers slips to gardeners during the warm season plant distribution each spring. I did some quick reading on how to plant them and stuck them in. A nice mounded trough full of sandy compost is ideal. No need for any chemicals in Mid-Missouri, plus they like hot, dry weather! By late summer, the vines had attempted to cover everything in and around the garden, including my husband’s truck! But any hassle they caused they made up for at harvest. From year to year my production has varied, but I have harvested as much as 160 pounds of tubers from four slips! Imagine getting that kind of production when there’s no grocery store to tide you through the winter. No wonder this crop has spread all over the world!

The author holding up a 12-pound sweet potato in front of her face. — Author with her personal record 12 pound sweet potato.

There is a trick to storing all that bounty. Sweet potatoes must be “cured” before storing. Curing not only improves storage (I still have one ready to eat from 2018), but also makes them sweeter and higher in nutrients. If you doubt this, try eating one straight out of the garden, make a mental note of how sweet it is, and then compare that to a cured potato one month later. In commercial production, tubers are stored in large buildings at 85-90 degrees (F) and about 90% humidity for anywhere from 5 days to 2 weeks. Unfortunately, that’s not so easy to replicate around here in the fall.

Here’s what I do. For one thing, NEVER let frost touch your vines. Sweet potatoes are a tropical plant, and frost encourages them to quickly rot. Starting in late September, I keep a close eye on the weather forecast. What I’m watching for is a late hot spell. A day or two before it hits, we cut off all the vines (the leaves can be eaten). Then when it’s at least 80 degrees, we dig them up and let them sit all day in the shade of other garden plants. Next we gently knock off the dirt (do not wash them), and either place them in a shaded hot place outside or, if necessary, move them into the hottest room of our house, making sure they are shaded. I doubt I have ever met the humidity requirements, but like I said I still have an 11-month old sweet potato to eat, so I must be doing something right. When I feel like they’ve cured long enough, I move them down into the basement. Cured tubers keep best at about 60 degrees in the dark.

So, what’s the best way to eat a sweet potato? For me, baked and then mashed with butter, brown sugar and fresh grated ginger — I actually converted a previous sweet potato hater with that fresh ginger addition. They are also good diced and roasted with a little olive oil and salt, or made into sweet potato fries. My neighbor who started me down this road makes them into black bean and diced sweet potato quesadillas for the kids at her daycare. Apparently they love them! And since sweet potatoes are chock full of beta carotene and vitamin A, nutrients that are lacking in many American’s diets, why not give them a try?

For additional information on growing sweet potatoes here are some handy links: