Harvest sweet potatoes before the first frost. When harvesting sweet potatoes: Loosen the soil. August is too early and October is too late (usually too cold and rainy). It usually takes until mid-September to mid-October for the fleshy roots to enlarge to a harvestable stage. Because the growing days are past, I’d like to raise digging early, but you cannot harvest because it continues to rain more than 10 days this fall on October stagnant autumn rain front. Potato, Sweet: Harvest sweet potatoes when 30 percent are larger than 3½ inches in diameter. Learn from my mistake. Too much water at the end of the season is the leading cause of split, cracked sweet potatoes. . I’ve just finished harvesting sweet potatoes in my own garden. How to plant. Harvesting Sweet potatoes continue to develop throughout the season and do not deteriorate in quality if they get too large. Planted too early? Use oxen plough to avoid bruising or injury to the root tubers. Rough irregular shaped roots: Heavy clay … Now that we know that curing is what makes sweet potatoes sweet, you may be wondering what curing actually is. First early potatoes crop over a period of about 30 days. Crew harvesting sweet potatoes. Bright green and dark-leaf varieties of ornamental sweet potatoes combine beautifully in a warm-season color bowl. I always struggle to find enough dry, shaded spots to set up screens during the curing period, so it's great to be able to use a mobile drying station. Like you, this year’s harvest has yielded some of the biggest sweet potatoes ever. Are Sweet Potatoes Fragile? Home-grown potatoes do well in all types of soil, but the richer the better, so dig in plenty of well-rotted organic matter, such as garden compost. Harvesting Sweet Potatoes. SOUTHWEST Harvest sweet potatoes as early as June and July in some parts of the Southwest. Planting the slips closer than 1′ together will reduce your yield and produce much smaller sweet potatoes. There are many sweet potato varieties, but to my knowledge for short growing seasons, you can only get one. I posted this as a learning experience for anyone that's curious about the proper time to harvest potatoes. An open, sunny site is best. Planting second early potatoes is a good way of extending the new potato crop for a few more weeks and possibly right up until the end of August. It is not in such a state that can be very harvest. Early-producing potato varieties are preferred by home gardeners who love their sweet flavors; the earliest of all – often called the first early potato varieties - are the sweetest of them all, small and with skins so tender they slip right off. By the second week in September, night time temperatures are starting to cool down which stops the sweet potatoes from getting any larger. What sweet potatoes crave: While sweet potatoes can crave less-than-satisfactory soil, they will grow a lot better if you utilize fertilizer. Once the weather cools down they won’t grow anyway. Gently shake the dirt off of the tubers. Using your fingers or a spading fork, loosen the soil around the base of the sweet potato vine. Harvest before frost because cool soil temperatures can reduce the quality and storage capacity of the sweet potatoes. Late-season varieties require 135 to 160 cool days to reach harvest. Unlike white potatoes, which have the annual plant sequence of vegetative growth, flowering and dying back, sweet potato plants would go on growing forever if the weather remained warm enough. If you’re not sure about if they’re ready, gently dig around a plant and look for potatoes. Cure your potatoes by laying them out in a cool, dark, and dry location for 1-2 weeks. Sweet potato varieties are ready to harvest 95 to 120 days after planting in the garden. Nothing is quite as tasty – or gives better bragging rights - as newly harvested home-grown potatoes. Dig before freezing weather occurs. Cure. 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