How to grow sweet potatoes in straw bales - harvest loads of sweet potatoes without having to dig!
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- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
- Southwest Ohio - planting zone 6a
In this video we will discuss our strategy for growing sweet potatoes in straw bales and harvest the two straw bales in which we grew sweet potatoes. We prefer growing sweet potatoes in straw bales for two main reasons: 1. the straw initially heats up when it is being conditioned, so is generally warmer than even our raised bed soil in late Spring when we plant our sweet potato slips and 2. harvesting is so much more fun and easy, just break apart the bales!
The straw bales are conditioned in a similar way to all our other straw bale plantings. We start with straw that was verified free of persistent herbicides. Make sure it is straw, not hay as hay has weed seeds. We purchase our straw from a local farm so we can monitor what is sprayed on it prior to baling.
Conditioning the straw is the process of charging the carbon rich straw with nitrogen and beginning the composting process. We use large bags of lawn fertilizer, just make sure it is ONLY fertilizer and has no other additives. The schedule for conditioning the bales we use is: Day 1: completely saturate the bale with water only. Day 2: apply about 1 cup of fertilizer and water in with about 3 gallons of water. Day 3: 3 gallons of water only, no fertilizer. Repeat the every other day cycle for 7-10 days. You will see the bales heat up and then come down in temperature, usually within 2 weeks of starting the conditioning. The bales are then ready to plant in.
Even with just two straw bale plantings sweet potatoes do command a lot of space in your garden. So place your straw bales off in a corner and expect about a 10ft radius of sweet potato vines coming off of them.
Harvesting is easy, just break apart the bales! No digging and the sweet potatoes are mud free when they come out. The only down side we saw this year is many of the sweet potatoes wrapped around each other and were hard to separate, but this is likely just because so many grew in such a small space! Perhaps in the future using a large square bale rather than two small bales would work better.
If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments!
-Peter - Наука та технологія
That is amazing! Yes, please make an instructional video about the conditioning process. I’ll have to try this when I get a bigger garden space!
Will do! I might not have enough footage from this year but I’ll do a comprehensive one probably March when I’m getting the next years garden in!
Can you do regular potatoes 🥔 like this? @@TheGardenFamilyI will watch it
@@RunW-TheBigDogs for sure! A few modifications but potatoes definitely like second year bales so I will plant some next spring 🤩
Yes please
Wow, I'd love to use this method, a step by step would be awesome!
Hi, I'm a korean farmer. No dirt. No digging. Clean sweet potato. Amazing idea! Thanks for sharing your experience.
Hello! Yes, it is a great way to grow sweet potatoes. Wishing you the best of luck in your garden!
I am in the UK ...I have just ordered my straw bales..so appreciate you doing this video..so stoked I found it..thanks for teaching me something new...I already have my slips sprouting ..perfect timing.
Hooray! Wishing you the best of luck!
The enthusiasm from your children was infectious! You are blessed. ❤ I live in the Southern US and might be able to get two rounds of harvest. I'll have to try it.
Thank you! It was so fun harvesting with my boys. Yes, you definitely have a longer growing season down there!
You're boys' enthusiasm is contagious!!! Great video! Can't wait to try! "That's a big boy!"
We had so much fun harvesting the potatoes together! Thanks for the wonderful comment, happy gardening to you!
So much fun to see the kids enjoying the garden with dad. Growing your own food is some of the best family time there is
What a nice comment ☺️ we had a fun time
I think dad was more excited than the kids…
Have you ever had issues with herbicides in your straw bales? I've heard horror stories of people using straw as mulch and ruining their growing plot. Awesome haul and glad to see your boys getting into growing their own food. It's a needed skill that modern society is losing
This is a super important question. We are seeing more and more persistent herbicides with long half lives in hay and straw these days, even in manure! We have not had a problem but we also buy the straw from a farm down the road. They do a pre-planting herbicide spray and a fungicide spray during the growing season but no herbicide prior to harvest like some farmers. If you don't know where your straw is coming from a suggestion would be to condition the bales the Fall before for the following Spring planting to give more time for the microorganisms to break down any sprays. And thanks, I love gardening with my kids, best way to teach survival skills in my opinion!
Theres a video about a man buying some cows and hes told they have been eating in fields that have those long haul herbicides. He bought the cows to use for manure and compost. He had to collect all their manure the first week and dispose of it somehow. A week is the safe amount of time to ensure any of the plants with the bad stuff had worked their way out of the cow!! Crazy😢
Thats is some frightening stuff😮😮😮
Straw is not organic, it is what left after wheat has been harvested. Wheat and all cereal grains, beans, potatoes, sunflowers etc. are all sprayed with round up 2 week prior to harvest to kill them so they dry out to make them easier to harvest. This practice is called crop desiccation (look it up), the practice of desiccation is world wide now. Foods that are labeled non gmo are desiccated also, unless your buying food that are certified 100% organic you are eating round up. Wheat is sprayed the whole time it is growing and again shortly before harvest so that straw I’m sorry to say is totally toxic.
A superb harvest !!! I wonder if rice straw is equally good.
@@YoungJefferyIdrus-ud7qh I haven't tried it but in theory any tightly packed carbon rich plant material should work similarly!
Just WOW! I love how clean the sweet potatoes are when grown in straw! Thank you!
It sure makes harvesting them fun! And no damage from shovels etc :)
Wow! That is an amazing harvest in such a small space! 😮
Thank you! The vines do need to sprawl out a bit but a lot of sweet potatoes in not very much space is great!
It's really cool to see people growing their own food. It would be great if more people acquired this habit. In addition to improving our health by consuming healthier foods, we contribute to preserving our planet by reducing the use of pesticides. Congratulations on sharing your knowledge and experience with us.
Thank you so much for your kind words! Trying to teach my kids to pass things on to the next generation =)
Ooooh Myyyyyyy Flippin Gggggggggd!!! I hadn't expected those results. That's phenomenal. Flat out. You nailed it. I am hardly ever impressed/surprised, but this one got me. Haven't read a single comment, yet the abscence of pest damage coupled with the cleanliness and SIZE-OF-END-PRODUCT is simply unmatched. Outstanding. Superb Job. A+++++. Speculation over. This is the model to follow. Thank you for this and your guidance. Terrific insight on this one. Take a Bow. You deserve it👏👏👏
Hi Nyles, wow, what a great comment! Really appreciate it =). We absolutely love this method and will do it again next year! Sounds like people want a little more in depth video so I'll work on that for next year. Wishing you a wonderful new year!
FWIW - I have an undergrad in Env. Science and lived (on Campus) at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. The spirit of their teaching is "Learn by doing." I then enjoyed two decades in the Parks Departments of three different California City Environs. I worked my way through the system and speak a very rare language that very few understand. Even more rare is to be surprised by a different approach. You floored me. Absolutely stunned by your results. That happens maybe twice in a decade at best. That was just a remarkable surprise. AND Sweet Potato's are a multi-level product to boot. I understand that post-harvest, they have to be cured in order to build the sugar level up in time for Thanksgiving. But your results - clean (pest-free with minimal damage) and Huuuuuuge clusters (they look like a bushel of ripe Mango's), I'd never seen that before. Something tells me your end product DID NOT NEED A 2nd stage curing - do I have that right? The temps in that bale were already up so high throughout the season, that a 2nd stage curing process was not needed? I suspect that to be the case with your approach. Terrific post and can't thank you enough🙏You!!! Merry Christmas and following closely your posts from here on.
@@nylesgregory2120 not sure why it didn't notify me of this reply. Small world, I taught a prep course at Cal Poly back in 2007. I was living in Santa Barbara at the time. There's definitely something about that composting straw the sweet potatoes really like, I think a lot of it is they get started nice and warm! We did end up curing them, not sure if we had to but we did. We've been eating them the last couple months and they are delicious =). Hope you have a wonderful new year!
Very cool method. Can’t wait to try this out. Thanks for sharing!
You're welcome! Hope it works well for you!
OMG I love jackfruits ❤❤❤❤ Ahao was so proud sharing his sister’s food to his friends 😂😂
=)
Wow I’ve never seen this type of gardening before.
It works very well for many crops!
I love listening the boys.. How they're amazed of your produce..
Yes, we had such a great time harvesting together! Thank you =)
Well done loyal and faithful servant that harvested hay bale sweet potatoe. Happy Fall Days!
Thank you! And I hope you have a blessed Fall as well ☺️🙏
Tell us all about the process of preparing the straw beds and how to maintain them. Thanks for sharing this great idea 👍👍👍❤
This is amazing. Yes, please do a step by step video of the conditioning process and planting from seed to stem. Thank you
I’ll be working on it this season!
What a cool idea indeed 👌 sweet potatoes i hay bales 👏.
Very beautiful upload and thanks for sharing 👍.
Greetings from 🇬🇧 Simon and Beth ❤❤❤
Hi Simon and Beth, thank you very much for watching and for the nice comment. Happy gardening to you both!
How fun. Yes, I'd be interested in more information on the conditioning process as well. This would be great in an area where I need straw bales for erosion control. Yet, still being able to successfully grow something well.
That would definitely work super well, might as well get some sweet potatoes while you’re at it right?! I’ll work on a more step by step video this coming season
This is AWESOME! Please do a step by step video starting with the slips. Thank you.
Will do! I'll try and get a more comprehensive growing guide for next year
"Look at this big boy". Kids are so funny. Lol
Love my boys! 💙💙
Wow! That is very impressive considering the actual square footage used. Also, and to me more importantly, you really showed HOW to grow the slips, and what they look like, AND that part about pre-planting/starting the slips in a small amount of dirt BEFORE planting them in the straw bales. Your time-frames and procedures were very clear and accessible. Also, I never before heard anything about your high nitrogen/watering to condition the bales. Thank you, and I'm putting your video in my favorites list! Thank you from California, because I always thought sweet potatoes would only grow in the southern states.
Hi John, thanks for the kind words! Very nice to know it was well received. Wishing you all the best next season!
One thing good is the red leaves .In Phillipines we use to put it in soup or just cook it and put one teaspoon of lemon.Lot of vitamins in it.
Yes! I'd love an instructional from start to finish. Especially seeing the slips planted. This is very encouraging. And the curing process. Thank you so much!!!😊
I’ll be working on it this season! I’ll probably release it as a few videos so I can get them out to everyone in a timely fashion…first video will be starting slips and conditioning straw bales :)
Very nice result! - How many slips did you plant per straw bale? Did you use a lot of water during this cultivation or is this mainly at the beginning of the conditioning process? I look forward to your full demonstration . I will soon try growing sweet potatoes this way for the first time and am looking for a lot of information before I start. Thank you in advance for your answer. Greetings from Belgium .
New subscriber, so I certainly don't miss your follow-up videos.
Where there also sweet potatoes in the ground , where the vines attached themselves to the ground.
What climate do you live in? because that obviously makes a big difference. Here in (Belgium we have a temperate climate)
@@lily-annevereecken53 thank you! We planted 4 slips per bale but probably could have done 2 or 3. The straw bales take about as much water as raised beds (more than in ground plantings). I will try and get a video up when I start the conditioning process!
@@lily-annevereecken53 a few small potatoes starting forming where the vines went into the ground but not big enough to harvest. We are in a humid, continental climate so we have cold winters and warm humid summers. Sweet potatoes definitely like warmth! Our average summer highs are around 85F (30C) and lows are generally around 65F (18C). You may need to find ways to increase heat in Belgium if it has cooler summers?
EXCELLENT!!! Going to go get me some straw bales for planting. Going to do regular potatoes too and hope it works better than last summer's attempt!!!
Great! Best of luck :)
Good job! Loved the boys being so excited.
Yes! Thank you! The three of us were all pretty excited 😆 ☺️
As a filipina, we eat the sweet potato tops too as salad, what you do is blanch it half cook..lots of vitamins
We also enjoy the greens and often eat them earlier in the season! In the late season they sometimes die back from frosts here in Ohio, USA and are less good to eat after the frost
I second that last comment!! How fun!! I love the pure joy in your kids 😂😂 Never mind the fabulous harvest! So very cute 🥰 Please give us your step by step process!!
Well thanks Misty! Me and the boys sure had fun harvesting them, and now we are eating them for Thanksgiving! I'll work on the step-by-step next year =)
Need more dads like this. Teaching your kids to be self sufficient scares the crap out of corporate America. Suck wind Conagra!!
I just saw this comment and thank you! I agree. Teaching kids to grow their own food is the ultimate survival tool!
Cảnh đẹp lắm wow củ nhìn ngon quá like 🎉🎉🎉🎉
☺️☺️
I love how enthusiastic the children are❤
Thank you! Me and the boys had a great time :)
Love this idea and that HUGE sunflower head, thanks for sharing
🌻✌🏼
thank you! Yes, we have a few mammoth sunflowers we are letting dry to harvest seeds from soon =)
Beautiful family! Beautiful video! Awesome harvest!💜
Thank you very much! We had a very fun time harvesting
So glad you featured growing potatoes in this manner. I’ve seen others grow in ground and in compost. I like this way much better. I would definitely like to see the step by step tutorial. I’ve subscribed so I won’t miss it when it’s released.
Great! I'll work on a "how to condition your bales" video in Spring and get footage of my whole season next year and put out a longer comprehensive video starting with slips and ending with a harvest next year!
@@TheGardenFamily Thanks!
Yes, please!@@TheGardenFamily
me, too!
Mee too (from Belgium)
I just so enjoyed the enthusiasm of your boys. My son are gone onto adulthood
Well thank you! They definitely grow up fast
Beautiful and big.
I am Japanese. I love sweet potatoes and planted them in my garden, but unfortunately I was only able to harvest ones as thin as a pencil.
It is said that in fields with a lot of nitrogen, the roots will be thinner and the leaves will grow thicker. Therefore, we are planting a variety called Soushinna, which eats sweet potato leaves. This is also a delicious and nutritious vegetable.
Thank you! The leaves are also quite delicious, I agree. Wishing you success in growing large sweet potatoes next year!
Wow,, you've convinced me that straw bales are the way to go with sweet potatoes!
it really is a great way to grow them! =)
I just love the simplicity of it. Thank you.
Thanks! It’s a great method!
Just saw your short on fb and here i am.
glad you found us on here! =)
Hahaha!! The kids are so excited. Thank you for the video and for all of your hard work.
Thank you! We had such a fun time =) Happy gardening to you
great video, I am definitely going to do this
Thank you! Hope you have a great harvest!
Wow! Once those sweet potatoes have cured for a few weeks, you'll have enough for Thanksgiving AND Christmas dinner!
Would love to see another video on the growing process. Sweet potatoes thrive in poor soil. If the plant receives too many nutrients, it produces abundant leaves but no tubers.
You may find that anywhere outside of the bales that the vines were able to root, you'll have bonus sweet potatoes.
Thank you! Yes, we were really happy with the harvest in just two bales. We are always titrating how much food to grow so we will see if we go through all of them and plant a 3rd bale next year if need be. These definitely produced a large amounts of vines, that's one issue some people may have if they live in smaller space. But they shot out a lot of tubers too! They did seem to root farther out as well but not for very long, so we found a few smaller tubers around the bales as well. Thanks for watching!
Yes, when you plant next year do a video -please.
Will do! I usually will condition bales in March or so, I’ll get some footage then!
@@TheGardenFamily Yes please and the slips as well... and how you fertilize them throughout the season until harvest.
Such a good dad!
Aww, thanks Christy ☺️🙏 had a great time harvesting with my boys
That was great! And your boys are so sweet and cute! They were so excited. Very nice video!! Ty❤❤
well thank you! We had such a fine time harvesting together =)
That's one of the best videos I seen. The best gardening is with kids 😅
Thanks Kent! Me and the boys had such a fine time pulling these out. Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Late to this- the excitement of the kids was infectious! And wowzers, that was a crazy harvest. Maybe next time bigger bales and more spread out slips? I need to try this next season here in Oregon!
Yes, great plan! We are actually thinking of doing a big 3x3x6 foot bale next year so they have more room to spread. And the kids (and I!) had so much fun pulling them out!
Your kids are cute! 😊
Thanks Tasha! ☺️
the leaf is edible, and that one of my favorit
Yes, they are very good cooked!
I would love to try planting this way next year.
That was amazing and yes no dirt...
So U just put fertiliser on the bales and some soil when planting them and fertilised them after that...
As I can't wait until next May as we are warming up here in Australia as today was 35deg...so I would love to try your method also want were the sweet potatoes you grew never seen that colour...
I love eating it raw like a nutty taste...
Well done looks great...glad I have just found your channel...😂❤😂❤
Nice Peter! It always amazes me to see how soil forms and the haul is pretty incredible
Yeah, I’ve always loved growing them this way. They grow super well in the ground as well (as you know!) but the harvest is just so easy in the straw bales. Me and the boys had a fun time :)
It looks like they’re growing cooked lobsters! 😂 I’m definitely going to try this method.
Haha yeah, it’s so fun because they come out clean! It’s definitely the best way I’ve grown sweet potatoes 🍠 ☺️
Sweet Potato, yeay I like this.
Yuhu
Very helpful tips , thanks you for sharing this method.
You are welcome!
Simply amazing😊. I’ve never seen sweet potatoes grown like this! Going to try it myself. New sub also😊
Great Job
Thank you!
happy harvest family.
This family loves straw, sweet potatoes and flannels 😅
haha, yes! We love both =)
Your boys may come to a point where they think this is a chore but as they get older they’ll enjoy the memories
It's strange how that cycle goes but I agree! Teach them the love of gardening young, they may take a break from it as teenagers but it will leave fond memories as adults!
So Amazing ! 🤩I will test that process the next year. Kiss for you and yours boys from my little city Cinq-Mars-la-Pile in France 🇲🇫
Thank you! Wishing you the best of luck next season!
please please make a video on how to prepare your straw bales for planting sweet potatoes.
Oh my goodness! Fantastic! We grow sweet potatoes every year and lately the southern shrews have been chewing on them badly. Maybe this would solve our problem. Thank you!
Hopefully this helps! We didn’t have any rodent issues but this was also the first year for our veggie garden at our new property. Hopefully that’s stays true in the coming years!
Thank you for sharing! Great job on sweet potatoes! Greetings from VT.
Well thank you! Hope you have a mild winter up there!
In parts of Africa we don'twhole foliage . remove the We put the little bulbs bawr fold hhdm off. Take big ones . Then little bulbs 😊 are placed back and harvested 2 to 3 months later.
Thanx very much for lessons. It's actually less labour intensive. Regards yo your entire team
Well thank you! Yes, they are great to re-plant. We usually keep some to plant the next year but our winter is very cold so we cannot replant right away
That was s cute. Your boys are adorable
YES PLEASE MAKE INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO...😊
Will do next season!
This is awesome,perfect harvest for sweet potatoes. Easy and smart
Thank you! It is definitely an easy way to harvest
Thanks for this. Such a great idea. I will be trying this.
You're welcome and best of luck!
Looks good. I usually get 25 lbs of new sweet potatoes from each plant. I rake vines in a circle around 4 plants when vines start to get too long I start cutting vines off to keep them from getting out of control. I am in TN we have hot dry 100° desert weather June to Oct. Our last frost is April 20 and first frost Nov 5. If vines get too long too much of the plants energy goes to producing vines and less energy to produce potatoes. 4 plants gives up 100 lbs of new potatoes.
Very nice!
Love the video plz make one this coming year
Will do!
Awesome video! Yes, would love a video on hay bale preparation also.
Thank you! I’ll work on one next spring :)
@@TheGardenFamily Great!
Oh wow.. Amazig😮😮I must try this in my garden🙏 Your boys are so sweet😍😍
Thank you!! ☺️👍🙏
for the broken ends, just dip them in salt before letting them dry out. Will extend their storage life. Cheers.
thanks for the tip!
Unreal! Learned something new! Thanks gonna try
Thanks Steve, it’s a great method! Working on a more step by step video this season ☺️
Cant wait. This is a GEM!@@TheGardenFamily
I’ll have to give this a try thank you so much
Wishing you the best of luck!
You're inspiring me
☺️👏
Man, this is game changing, im definitely gonna try this.
You won't be disappointed!
Very good
Thank you!
Amazing harvest 🎉😍😍😍
Thank you! We had a lot of fun finding them in the straw :)
Whoa! This is amazing! I'm in NE ohio and am totally trying this next year
👋 fellow Ohioan. It’s a great method for us here in zone 6!
This is so fantastic and great, can't believe it
Thank you!
wow beautiful sharing
Thank you! ☺️🙏
That is truly amazing!!
thank you!
Well. I am amazed! Gives me hope that I could plant sweet potatoes in my zone 7 plot. (You can always pressure can the broken ones.)
Thank you! Yes, we are here in Zone 6 and have good results every year this way!
Yes please to the step by step conditioning video. You got a lot more from your 2 bales than I got from a
4x8’ bed.
Will do! I'll document the whole process next year
Nice! I think I'll try this next year!
👏👏👍
Love it!
Wow I really love that idea !!!!!
It’s a great way to grow them! ☺️🙏
That's awesome!
Thank you! It is a great way to grow them!
The colour on those potatoes is beautiful 🎉🎉🎉❤
They really were a great color! and no dirt on them =)
Damn ! They're great and it sounds as good as original ! 😊
Thank you!
I'm also in Southwest Ohio Zone 6A
nice! it's a great place to be =)
Love it I need to harvest mines now ❤❤❤
Thanks! Have a great harvest! 🍠
Wow amazing !!!
☺️☺️ thanks for the comment!
This is best chanel.that i ever seen.i can give subcrib.thank you for you experien
Thank you Ahmad! ☺️
Wow thank you for this video
My pleasure!
Incredible..
So fun ! I want to try this
You should! It's a great method for sweet potatoes =)
Great idea sir I will do it also . Thanks.
Thank you and best of luck next season!
The kids make this video so exciting 🙃
Love my boys! We all felt like kids finding all those potatoes :)
Yes do a video of it! I’m going to do it!!
Will do!