- I've loved potatoes, both in my garden
and in my mouth for many years now.
And you guys have seen that here
on the Epic Gardening channel
but what I've never grown are sweet potatoes.
So in this video I'm gonna show you
what these varieties are,
the best way to plant sweet potatoes, as well as the soil
and all the different conditions on how to grow them.
I'm going on a little trip though.
So when I get back, you're gonna see exactly how we do it.
- Well, it turns out that Kevin left the homestead
and he's on a vacation, probably well-deserved.
But what I did hear
is that we got some sweet potatoes delivered.
So we need to make sure that these are alive and doing well
so that when Kevin gets back,
we'll have a bountiful sweet potato for him to plant out.
So what we have here are five different varieties
of sweet potatoes.
This first one that I just pulled out
is called lilac beauty.
Now, the problem is when you get a transplant in the mail
whether it's like a slip like this,
which is just a rooted cutting,
or it's a total transplant all on its own,
you don't know how it was grown or where it was grown.
So if I planted these out directly into the sun,
straight into the garden
there's a chance that they'll immediately shrivel out
and die because they're not ready for full sun exposure.
So what we're gonna do today is actually pot them up
and keep them in partial shade to make sure they survive.
But I'll also probably plant one out
just to see if it does get roasted.
So what I have here is a special little recipe,
it's the hermit dredge.
And what we have is our liquid is this red Azos
which is a beneficial bacteria
that's supposed to promote root cuttings and growth.
And then the other thing I have is this Mycos
which is a mycorrhizae powder.
So what we're gonna do is dip the transplant
into a dilute mixture of that Azos bacteria, like so.
And then from there, actually,
let's go ahead and leave these in here,
'cause you wanna let this soak in this liquid
for about five minutes, 15 to five minutes.
So that is the lilac beauty.
And let's look at some of these other varieties.
We have Jersey yellow, Myanmar purple
and this one is very short, which is interesting.
And it's called the pumpkin yam sweet potato.
And the last one over here is our Korean gold.
This one apparently tastes really delicious.
I'm sure all of these tastes great.
So I'm gonna go ahead and start soaking these in here.
Once they've soaked for a little bit,
we'll go into the dredge
and plant them into these containers.
I actually just came up
with a much smarter solution to this.
I just trimmed off the bottom of the bag.
Now I can put this whole bag right into the solution
and the label's attached to the plant.
So I'm gonna go ahead and do that to all these guys.
And again, we're gonna let them soak
for probably 10 minutes.
So the first one up is that lilac beauty
that I put straight into the water.
What I have here are the four cells
partially filled with soil, but not all the way
so that we could pop these guys in
and then top them off with soil.
So the classic hermit dredge here
is we are gonna go from the Azos liquid
and then we're gonna tap it into the mycorrhizae
and you want the mycorrhizae powder
to make contact with the roots.
And this is all roots, so we got really good contact.
Now we have four of each of those sweet potatoes potted up.
What I'm actually going to do is move them over here
because I don't want them to get afternoon sun
that could be really intense.
And although sweet potatoes love a lot of heat and sun,
when they're at this stage as transplants
I wanna make sure they survive.
So I'm gonna put them in the shade here in the afternoons.
And in the morning, this will get sun.
Now that these are protected,
I actually came up with a clever use
for those last couple extra slips in the front yard garden.
So let's go over there and check that out right now.
So now we're up here in the front yard garden.
And what you see is that I actually have this bed
that appears to have no space whatsoever available.
And that is true in theory.
But what we're gonna do is actually use this full bed
that's on its way out.
It's full of broccoli that's already flowered.
The bees are on it still, but in a week, it's gonna be done.
So my thought process here
is that let's go ahead and use these plants
as shade to protect these young delicate sweet potatoes.
So my thought is I'm gonna come in here
in between each broccoli plant,
I'm gonna pop in the vines,
bury them in right on a drip emitter
cover it in mulch
and that's it.
So the idea is that these plants
are going to provide the shade that it needs
to not fully get stressed.
And so in a week, we'll come back,
cut out all this broccoli
and see if any sweet potatoes remain.
But for now I have to get the rest of these in the ground.
- Garden's been looking good since I've been gone.
The only question though, is where are my sweet potatoes?
Looks like Jacque may have planted a couple up front
when I walked in, but the rest seem
to have been potted up right here.
So they didn't die while I was gone
on actually my first vacation guy, since,
more or less I started going on Epic Gardening full time.
So it was a much needed rest,
but I'm back, sweet potato daddy's back
I'm here to take care of you.
I'm here to show you how we're gonna take
these potted up slips that are looking
very, very healthy and plant them in their final containers.
There's actually a lot to know about container sizing
as well as soil construction.
So let's head on over and get it done.
So I've got my sweet potatoes,
I've got the Jack Daniel's, half sawed off whiskey barrel.
We hunted these down.
Pretty heavy, but pretty much the most attractive way
to grow sweet potatoes you could probably ever think of.
And why is it important to have a barrel like this?
Well, I'll say this,
from the perspective of container sizing for sweet potatoes,
it actually really does matter
both not only the size, but the shape.
You really want a wider container with sweet potatoes,
gives you more space to plant these slips.
I would say no smaller than 20 gallons.
That's why these half whiskey barrels are a great option.
I think this one actually came from Jack Daniel's,
made in the USA authentic aged Oak barrel.
Let's see if it,
I mean, it definitely smells a little whiskey-ish
but we're gonna be growing a vegetable in here.
So the next thing you need to think about is the soil mix.
So you're gonna do well
if you have any sort of standard organic
high quality potting mix.
Right here,
I've got strawberry fields from FoxFarm.
It's just one that we've got local to us.
It is on that higher quality side.
And what I'm gonna do is start mixing this in.
So I'm gonna rip it open
and you could grow in just potting mix
if you really, really wanted to.
But the thing that sweet potatoes want
is sort of a mix of sand and loam.
We've talked about different soil textures
on this show before
and you know that sandy has the most drainage.
Loamy is sort of a mix of all three.
You don't really want to have it in that clay
or silt range for sweet potatoes.
Okay, bag number two is in,
you'll notice it's not all the way full.
Why is that?
Because I have a couple more amendments
that I will be adding to this.
And the first one is kind of unusual.
It's actually just patio or paver sand.
So I need to get it more sandy, how?
Add sand, pretty simple.
And the next thing I want to add is a little compost
that we had delivered.
So this is more of a woody style compost.
You can see there's decent amount of chips in here.
It's more nitrogen heavy than your average compost,
but I would still say it is on that woodier side.
A lot of these municipal compost you get
kind of are on that side.
So I'm gonna go ahead, top it off
with some of that compost and now,
we need to incorporate
so the way we've started doing it here
at Epic Gardening is actually just using
these drill auger bits is from a company
called Power Planter. We stock 'em in the store now
'cause it's become our favorite way to mix soil
but just gonna go in and give it a little mix.
You can see why we really like that tool.
It's just a really fun way to mix up soil
and be relatively confident
that you've actually well incorporated
all of those different ingredients and low and behold,
we're pretty much right up here
at these surface rim of our Jack Daniel's barrel
and it's time to get our slips in.
So I have four slips,
I would say a gallon barrel of this size,
you could probably put about six slips in.
So I'm a little light here,
but certainly not going to be a huge problem.
In fact, one of these has two slips in it.
So here we go.
I'm coming out.
Looks like Jacque the garden hermit
took really good care of these.
These roots are looking not only pristine, white, healthy,
but the plants themselves have developed quite a bit
more roots since we got the slips,
so that's really good news.
I'm not gonna disturb this too much.
I'm gonna plant it, not here, but about to there or so.
So roughly right when the first leaf node
starts to come out, gonna dig down in.
Nothing fancy here, we already sort of soaked these
with a good amount of nutrition.
I'm not gonna do any in hole amendments
just added compost after all.
And if I've got four of these, generally,
you wanna space 'em roughly about eight inches apart
and I've got plenty of space to do that here.
So I'm just gonna kind of go in like a little
interior square pattern.
Sweet potatoes really prefer a more hot,
more humid environment than potatoes would prefer
and take a little bit longer to produce.
Like a hundred, 150 plus days
to get a really good production out of your sweet potatoes.
And they produce a little bit more horizontally and bushy
than potatoes, which you typically can hill up
and they go a little more vertical.
Honestly, I might like these
a little more than I like potatoes.
I hate to admit it, 'cause I love potatoes so much.
But you can see we space these out pretty well.
I'm actually gonna bring this one
a little bit further over this way.
So never be afraid to change your planting plan
if it didn't make sense
after you put everything else in here.
So in we go right there,
the only thing left to do in this planting phase
is talk about location.
So this is an area in my backyard
that's getting full sun exposure throughout the day.
You don't really want this in a too windy or cold
of an area in your yard.
So give it as close to full sun exposure as you can manage,
if you're on a balcony or something like that,
throw it right up next to that balcony.
Ideally a south or west-facing balcony.
So there we go, we're in, we'll give it a little firm up.
We'll water it in.
Last thing we need to do is just water it in.
When I've not watered in the soil
when I mixed it and filled it,
I like to be a little bit more gentle.
So I like to come in with a lighter touch
and just slowly hydrate it
because it's not super moist from when I started, right.
If I had been mixing and wetting at the same time
then I could give this a really light water,
and it would accept it just fine.
I think the thing to really think about is
remember, we added sand to this mix.
Why?
Because we want good drainage.
Sweet potatoes, if you're gonna kill them early
in the slips phase,
it's gonna be probably because you overwatered
or you don't have enough drainage.
Both of them pretty much end up causing the same thing.
You're gonna rot those roots out.
So I wanna be really sensitive to that
and only hydrate this as much
as it actually needs to be hydrated.
That being said, you'd be surprised sometimes
how much a new pot of soil can actually accept
as far as water goes.
So for part one of sweet potatoes,
I hope you enjoyed this hope.
This was informative.
Stay tuned and subscribe,
because we will be growing a huge crop of sweet potatoes.
There's four more available to plant
and a ton more to harvest.
Stay tuned, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.