fried potatoes

I can't do much gardening now, but I'm cooking and eating my produce. Today's recipe is fried potatoes. I found, then lost, a recipe online that worked great.

Standard potatoes: russets, blues, etc.
Sweet potatoes
Canola oil

1- Scrub and cut standard potatoes (whites, yellows and/or blues, leave skin on). Rinse in cold water, then soak 5 or more minutes in cold water.
2- Heat oil to 210-230*F.
3- Dry soaked potatoes on towel, then fry about 10 minutes in preheated oil. Remove to paper towel and let cool.
4- Increase oil temperature to 265*F.
5- Scrub and cut the sweet potatoes (leave skin on).
6- Add all potatoes (sweets and standards to the oil. Fry 5-10 minutes til nicely browned. Add salt and enjoy!

digging sweet potatoes!!!

My son helped me dig sweet potatoes on Sunday evening. What a great event!!!

I have to admit that to get my 18 year old into the garden, I had to trade for something he was interested in - $$. Since he currently doesn't have a job, but wants cash, I offered him the rate he got at his most recent job. Anyway, he got the garden fork and started in on the bed as I ripped out the vines.

My sweet potato bed was about 4 by 4 feet. Located just east of my popcorn (that failed this year :( ), its was bit shaded, and the vines had grown up and into the corn stalks. Its my first attempt at growing sweet potatoes and I was nervous.

Underground crops are such a suspense. I may have been holding my breath as we started. But with my son's first digs, he turned up beautiful orange, red and white tubers. And as I pulled the vines, lots of tubers came up attached to the plants. Wow! What a nice crop. My final weighing said 8 pounds of sweets. A good size bucket full.

One of the best parts was when my son said "I'm finished. I've got all of them." I asked if he would double dig just to make sure he found all of them. He said he had been double digging and they weren't any more. So I offered him a dollar for any additional ones he could find. His eyes lit up and he went back to digging. I tended the basil, weeded here and there, picked the pumpkins, and he dug. He kept announcing "Here's another!" ... "One more". Eventually, he earned another $15 and I finished the rest of my garden work with great company.

There is something very exciting (or not) about underground crops. I was so excited to dig potatoes with my parents this year and they turned out horrible - eaten by voles. Who would know. The leaves look great, but what'[s underneath?

The sweets we dug were all sizes and shapes. Tiny ones, big ones. Red, orange, white. Sunday evening I threw a few baby sweets in to roast. They were delicious. I started to peel them, but learned that baby sweets don't need to be peeled. I've never had a baby sweet potato before.

So I have another basket for my larder. We love sweet potatoes! I am looking forward to enjoying all of them.




... click on the label below to see my past posts about sweet potatoes....

sweet potato vines

My sweet potatoes seem to be doing very well. I bet they'll exceed their plot - which I always enjoy. Maybe they'll grow up the popcorn stalks or weave through the old broccoli plants. We'll see.

planting sweet potatoes

I've never grown my own sweet potato slips before and I suppose I used a non-traditional method. They aren't really slips, but little plants that I transplanted today. I transplanted about a dozen. I think I heard that they do OK in the shade, so I planted them next to my corn bed.

transplanting sweet potato slips

I cut up my sprouted sweet potatoes today and potted them up in a tray of soil.

more sweet potato info

Donald and CJ have great advice on growing sweet slips, so I am posting their comments here so I can find them more easily.

I grew these for a few years at my Community Garden Plot in Hamilton Ont. Its a bit cooler here than Boston. To grow the slips, I put three tooth picks in the sweet potato and suspend them in a canning jar full of water. 1 ft slips are ideal. After the slips are 1 ft, put them in the canning jar to root. Space them 2 ft per slip and space the rows 3 ft and use Garden cover to heat the soil. They grow slow and then they they take off and the green leaves spread out. Near the end of summer leave them in until the night time temps are above 10c. Near the end of Summer the tubers will double in size every two weeks. From Donald January 24, 2010 8:55 PM

When the slips get about a foot long. Put them in water to start the roots. If the bare root slips are hardened off properly they won't suffer much stress when planted. Row covers to heat up the ground will increase the size of your tubers.
From Donald March 03, 2010 2:29 AM

I started my sprouts the day after you did. I took the sprouts off when they were about 4 inches high. I put them to root in water like Donald suggested. Once the roots were about an inch and half long, I planted them in soil. One plant is now about 8 inches tall and the other 3 are about 5. I put 4 sweet potatoes to sprout and as you can see, one did quite well, it has about 15 leaves on it. Two potatoes had no sprouts and in fact started to rot. The other produced the other 3 smaller plants. Can't wait to see the outcome this year. Sweet potatoes and artichokes are my experiments this year. From CJ March 03, 2010

It sounds like my little sprouts shouldn't be in water yet. When they are 4 inches or 1 ft long, then I should put them in water to root. The rooting part seems to go very fast when they're in water. The sprouting part starts slow.

sweet potato sprouts

I'm using my Christmas martini picks to support sweet potatoes in water glasses. They're sprouting well. They grow slowly, so I'm glad I've started early. They are supposed to be a foot tall before planting out in May.