From the roots up: Harvesting sweet potatoes

BY SUSAN LANE

Greetings, friends:  

Loving this cooler weather but now it’s time to get serious about fall harvest. We have been harvesting our sweet potatoes. I will share how we do this with you. 

First, I cut all the vines off and I save them. What? Save them?  Yep, we eat them too! (Don’t tell my husband; he’s a traditional food eater so I sneak them into what he eats.) The leaves are high in Vitamin A, several of the B Vitamins, Vitamin C and Vitamin K. They are high in potassium and magnesium. They are low in calories, carbs and fats so are excellent for weight loss. The Vitamin K is good for bone and teeth growth and aids in good blood clotting.

Younger summer leaves are tender and sweet. The younger leaves are good sliced thin and put in stir fries but since my husband would know he was eating them, I only use the end-of-season harvest time leaves. These leaves can be tougher and a little bitter. They are great sliced thin and added to soups. But my favorite way to use them is to separate the leaves from the vines and put on my electric dehydrator trays for a few hours. When they are brittle and crisp I powder them up using my blender and store in a mason jar. Then during the winter when I am making soups, casseroles, pasta sauce, meatloaf, smoothies, scrambled eggs, etc., I just add some of the powder. No one knows but me, and my hubby gets the added health benefits from this. 

Sweet potatoes must be harvested before the first frost. I do mine mid-morning on a warm 70- to 80-degree day. To harvest the actual potato, the vines are cut off at ground level then either with your hands or a “potato fork” just dig down in the dirt and pull them out. A potato fork is a shovel-type tool with four “forks.” You can find them at farm auctions quite often for just a few dollars. I love digging sweet potatoes as you just never know how many or how big they are growing under the ground. I equate the thrill to it being like Christmas and that long awaited present is being opened.

After the potatoes are dug I leave them drying out on a tarp under a shade tree the rest of the day. Do not wash the dirt off, just brush it off. Before dark I bring into the house and lay flat in a room that is about 70-80 degrees. Our ancestors “cured” their sweet potatoes behind the wood stove. I leave the potatoes curing for seven to 14 days, then move to a cool moisture free storage area that I can keep at about 60 degrees. Basements work great or I put in a lightly insulated box with air holes, in the garage. I try to lay mine flat not touching each other, but if not, they could be stacked. I check them weekly and remove any that begin to go bad as one bad one will ruin the whole box. Sweet potatoes will keep all winter this way.