SWEET POTATOES - SUPER SURVIVAL FOOD FOR EVERYONE

Sweet potato harvest

Every now and then when my vegetable racks are empty, I raid my sweet potato raised bed in the shelter for something to harvest for the pot.

It started with a few bought sweet potatoes which sprouted in these vegetable racks in the kitchen, which I then transplanted out in this raised bed.

Every week’s lawn cuttings are placed on top to form a mulch where my Eisenisa Fetida earthworms turned this mulch into vermisoil, which is excellent for growing sweet potatoes in. So basically I only use the mulch to create new soil to feed the sweet potatoes, plus watering them now and then.

It took them quite a number of months to grow big enough sweet potatoes to harvest, but from a 30cm square I pull regularly over one kilogram of sweet potatoes out of this small area for one meal. So I reckon it is the answer to poverty – anyone can grow these anywhere and survive on it, throughout the year.

The cement 2-block raised bed system with a cement paving slabs as flooring throughout the shelter, is the answer to 100% successful harvesting of sweet potatoes as moles and other pests are excluded from feasting on them. I have an irrigation system as well, but used it sparingly as sweet potatoes does not require so much watering as in normal vegetable production.

I hope more people will use my method to sustain themselves with these vegetables as well, by planting the white or the red sweet potato varieties, which are very hardy, require little labour and grow extremely fast.

Comments for
SWEET POTATOES – SUPER SURVIVAL FOOD FOR EVERYONE

Health Benefits of the Sweet Potato
by: Natalie Rowles

Sweet potatoes contain a rich source of low-fat Vitamin E and anti-oxidants. It helps the heart to regulate high blood pressure, anemia and inflammatory conditions. Harvest and consume soon, is still the best option to obtain the most nutritional benefits of the sweet potato.
See website Health 24.com Home for more info.
It’s the family of the morning glory and flowers from June onwards, giving a mauve coloured “morning glory” flower. It’s distant family is the potato etc. If you can obtain the “Yam” sweet potato with the orange “flesh”, plant them instead because apparently it has a much sweeter taste than the white or red sweet potatoes shown in the above photographs.

Harvested a 5 litre bucket full of sweet potatoes
by: Natalie Rowles

I was completely out of vegetables and I went to raid the sweet potato bed. Using a hand fork, it was quite easy to find the top layer of sweet potatoes amongst the network of roots. I came back with a full bucket of sweet potatoes that will give me about five meals at least.

As I was harvesting them, I came across one big Shongalollo – which I killed straight away as it was hollowing out some of the sweet potatoes as a food supply. See photo of some with hole marks on top – that is the work of the Shongalollo!
So it was a case of survival for me to kill off this pest in the bed.

I’ve only washed the top layer to show the colour of these sweet potatoes as I have the white sweet potatoes as well inside this bed. The much darker one is the white one.
The bucket full of unwashed sweet potatoes were placed inside the vegetable rack in the kitchen where these will keep much longer than the washed lot which I cooked tonight for a meal.
My own organic sweet potato dish was just out of this world – tasted supreme!

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