TODAY I WILL TEACH YOU HOW TO CULTIVATE SWEET POTATOES
SOURCE
Hello friends from the farm, today I'm going to teach you how to plant sweet potato, also known as sweet potato or sweet potato. Following these tips I guarantee a great harvest, it is a root storage or false tuber which is consumed in various dishes (cooked, fried, sweet, etc.). The plants of sweet potatoes can be of two types: creeper and shrub. Both types develop with the hot summer sun and are relatively easy to grow. Sweet potatoes are not started by seed like most other vegetables, they must be started by cuttings. Cuttings are buds that grow from a sweet potato
VARIETIES:
Among the varieties there is the INTA Morada: the most traditional, very good yield, excellent flavor and conservation. Purple skin color, yellow flesh with orange spots; Okinawa 100: white skin and creamy pulp and mature Beauregard.
HOW TO SOW THE BATATA.
To start your cuttings, you need several clean and healthy sweet potatoes. Each sweet potato can produce up to 50 shoots. To create more shoots, wash potatoes well and cut them either in half or in large sections. Place each section in a jar or glass of water with half the potato under water and the other half on top. Use some chopsticks to hold the potato in its correct place.
Cuttings need heat, so you should put them on a shelf in the window or on top of a radiator. In a few weeks your potatoes will be covered with buds of leaves on the top and roots of the bottom.
PLANT THE ESQUEJES
Once your sweet potatoes have sprouted, you have to separate them into plantable cuttings. To do this, take each sprout and carefully scoop it out of the sweet potato. Take each sprout and place it in a shallow bowl with the bottom half of the stem submerged in the water and the leaves hanging out over the edge of the bowl. A few days later the roots will come off the bottom of each new plant.
When the roots are about 2.5 cm long, the new cuttings are ready to be planted. To keep the sweet potatoes in good condition, the water has to be clean and fresh. You should discard any cutting that does not produce roots or appear withered.
PREPARE THE SOIL FOR THE ESQUEJES
Before planting sweet potato cuttings, you'll have to do a little extra work. Sweet potatoes need loose, well-drained soils to form large tubers. Roots should not encounter resistance when they try to expand within the earth. Loose soil is more important than any other factor when it comes to growing sweet potatoes successfully.
THE ESQUEJE PLANT
Dig a hole about 10 or 12 cm deep and 7 cm wide. Place a leaf in each hole with the roots down. Place the leaf so that the lower half is covered with soil, while the upper half with all the new leaves is above the ground.
Fill the hole carefully with dirt. Sweet potatoes are very sensitive to shock. Once you have covered the hole completely with soil, gently press the plant to eliminate any remaining air bubbles.
IRRIGATION
We water abundantly whenever the soil is about to dry because this plant loves water although we can not forget that the excess of this, in the form of puddles, can seriously damage it, even killing it, so we will make sure we have a good drainage system. Once all the plants are in place, you should water them. You will have to spray them with abundant water until all the earth that surrounds them is wet. Stop watering before the mound begins to erode. New plants, such as cuttings, need to be watered every day during the first week and every other day during the second week. Each week, the watering should decrease until you irrigate once a week. If the soil is very dry or it has rained a lot, you may have to adjust this calendar in your own garden. Sweet potatoes can withstand drought, but they will produce less, so make sure they have water during the hottest summer hours.
WEATHER
As a plant with a tropical and subtropical to temperate climate, it is very sensitive to frost. It needs a period of four months free of frost and warm temperatures, below 15 ° C stops its growth. Unlike regular potatoes, which grow best when the ground is cold, sweet potatoes are tropical plants and very sensitive to cold. In warmer climates, many gardeners plant sweet potatoes about a month after the last spring frost, when both the air and the soil are reliably warm. The plants produce exuberant vines.
We will select a cultivation area where plants have a minimum of 5 hours of direct sunlight because they like high temperatures, although it is true that it can develop well in many conditions due to its rusticity.
GROUND
It prefers sandy loam or clay loam with sand and, if the soil does not have organic matter, it would be advisable to add compost, manure or earthworm humus to improve it and that the flat ones grow in suitable conditions.
In addition, sweet potatoes need loose, well-drained soils to form large tubers since roots do not have to encounter resistance when they try to expand. Therefore, it is very important that the soil is loose, more than any other factor when it comes to the growth of these tubers.
HARVEST
From transplant to harvest, 130 to 150 days pass. The harvest begins when the roots (sweet potatoes) are well developed. It can be harvested in a staggered way but before the first frosts you have to harvest everything. The yield is estimated between 2 and 2.5 Kg per square meter.
CULTIVATION CARE
It is recommended to hoe the crop with a hoe before 20 days of the transplant so that the guides do not cover the furrow. It is not a very nutritious crop, you can use a lower quality soil. The soil must be well watered before the transplant. The crop has two critical periods that are the first and the last 40 days of its cycle in which it is necessary to irrigate conveniently. Diseases and pests: in the central part of the country the sweet potato does not have pests that require treatment, being careful with the weeds.
Source:
http://www.elbroteurbano.com/como-cultivar-batata/
https://plantas.facilisimo.com/como-plantar-batatas-o-boniatos-en-el-huerto-de-nuestros-suenos_2020367.html
http://comoplantar.com.es/batatas
Thank you for taking a few minutes to read my article.
Well taught, indeed we @farms has learnt from this publication and find it of great importance to this community and sub-community
Resteem
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I really don't know much about farming but I just learned how to plant sweet potatoes now. Thanks for this post.
Potatoes is much eaten as staple food in my community.
I love sweet potatoes fried.
@manka
content creator