Many heard about sweet potato, but few saw it. Tried even less. But yam can be cooked very tasty dishes. But where to get it? In large cities, sweet potato is sold in supermarkets. But not everyone lives there. And the price of it "bites." Is it possible to grow sweet potatoes in the middle lane? After all, the climate there is little similar to the weather conditions of Colombia and Peru, where does this plant come from.
Relatives of sweet potato
The hope is that sweet potato is the closest relative of morning glory. This is the scientific name for bindweed, which has long been grown in our latitudes. Creepers with pink, white and purple flowers braid arbors, various supports and delight the eye all summer. They are especially beautiful in the morning. Morning glory seeds of these varieties tolerate winter frosts well and give amicable shoots. But blue morning glory requires special attention. Sow it in April in pots. Seeds are not stored in the ground.
Edible sweet potato requires even more attention. But the process of growing it can be called amazing and exciting. All gardeners will be interested to know how sweet potatoes are grown in the middle lane.
Appearance
A sweet potato is a creeping vine. Its length can reach five meters. The stems themselves root in nodes. Because usually a plant in height is not more than 20 cm. Sweet potato has many varieties. The leaves of some of them are palmate, others are heart-shaped, like a bindweed. The flowers are light, not formed on all plants.
Fruits are tubers, like potatoes.
Long or rounded. But usually they grow a lot more potatoes. Some specimens reach a length of 30 cm. The peel is white, pink, light pink or orange, with a barely noticeable roughness. It is easily separated from the pulp. Inside the fruit is pale pink, yellow or red (dessert varieties). At the cut of the tuber, juice, similar to milk, appears.
The weight of one tuber is from 100 g (immature) to 3 kg. At home, it grows to ten kilograms. And the yield of sweet potato is simply amazing: from a hectare you can collect 50 tons. And 300 more centners of stalks for animal feed.
Growing conditions
In the tropics, sweet potato is a perennial plant.
In the subtropics and places where the temperature drops below zero, it is cultivated as an annual. Indeed, at the slightest frost, both leaves, stems, and even tubers die. And when the temperature drops to 10 degrees, its development stops.
Sweet potato is pollinated by bees. But if it does not bloom, that's okay. After all, this is the case that not the tops, but the roots are important.
The growing season is from 180 to 250 days. At the same time, both return and first autumn frosts must be taken into account. So calculate whether it is possible to grow sweet potatoes in central Russia.
Beneficial features
What has earned the sweet potato such attention that they seek to grow it thousands of kilometers from the homeland?
This is one of the few plants in which all parts are edible. By caloric content, sweet potato exceeds potatoes. A third of the weight is starch. Sweet potato contains glucose, ascorbic acid and various mineral salts and vitamins. Varieties with yellow flesh contain a lot of carotene.
Varieties of sweet potato
It usually resembles potatoes to taste. Sweet potato can be fodder (almost unsweetened). Vegetable contains a small amount of sugar. Dessert - the sweetest and most delicious. There are varieties with the taste of banana, melon.
Among the crops grown in our territories are almost unsweetened Potato, Vegetable Record and Dessert Chestnuts.
Sweet Potato Dishes
They say that it can be consumed fresh. Young leaves are soaked in salt water to remove bitterness, and put in a salad. But hardly anyone will do this regularly.
But mashed potatoes are cooked from boiled sweet potato, put it in borsch and soup. Pancakes are fried from cooked in peel and peeled (so as not to boil). You can form and cook cheesecakes, manti, cutlets. Delicious sweet potato - fried in slices in sunflower oil. If you eat it with sour cream, then you can not distinguish from cheesecakes. The tubers are baked, dried.
Sweet varieties are used to make various sweets.
A coffee-like beverage is made from seeds.
In industrial cultivation, sweet potato can produce flour, alcohol, and sugar.
Distribution area
Sweet potatoes are traditionally grown in tropical and subtropical regions.
But it can successfully grow and yield crops in more northern regions. It is cultivated in a hundred countries of the world. Sweet potatoes are successfully grown in Ukraine, the countries of Central Asia, in the south of Russia, as well as in the Caucasus.
How to grow sweet potatoes in central Russia?
In order to enjoy the sweet potato fruits, gardeners grow it under a film. Although it costs a lot of trouble.
Growing sweet potatoes in the middle lane is possible already because the soil there is quite suitable. He loves the light and loose earth. Well, if it is sandy loam and loam. Acidic soil is first calcified.
For development, a temperature of 25 to 30 degrees is best suited. But even when lowering to 20, sweet potato develops normally.
Cultivation in the middle lane is possible in areas where there is a lot of sun, closed from the wind by trees or buildings. It grows in the shade, but there will be no harvest.
Sweet potato predecessors are pumpkin, onion and tomatoes.
Site preparation
The peculiarity of growing sweet potato is that with deep digging of the soil, the roots become too long and thin, root crops go deep into the ground and do not grow large. For this reason, land for growing sweet potatoes in the middle lane is dug to a depth of no more than 20 cm. It is advisable to do this in the fall. Then make two kilograms of humus or twice as much compost (per square meter). Mineral fertilizers containing phosphorus are added. In the spring, loosen the soil, after sprinkling nitrogen-containing fertilizer.
Breeding
Very interesting is propagated sweet potato. Cultivation in the middle lane is not from seeds. After all, this is a long process that requires at least two years to get a normal crop.
It can be planted like potatoes by digging tubers into the ground. But then he will start to grow back late and by the beginning of the cold weather he will not have time to give a harvest. Yes, and the stems of this bush will have too much. There is a very interesting and at the same time simple way of reproduction. At the beginning of March, sweet potato tubers are placed in sand or light soil. Previously, they can be cut, the place of the cut to be sanitized. Periodically moisturize, but do not fill. The temperature in the room should be 18-25 degrees. The processes with four nodes, reaching 10-12 cm, are carefully torn off and placed in a jar or other convenient dish with water. There they take root.
It is even easier to propagate the sweet potato by placing it vertically in a glass of water. So it takes up less space. You can dive sprouts in plastic cups or a greenhouse. In the early days, or even weeks, of June, the sprouts are planted in a permanent place.
From one tuber of sweet potato you can pinch from three dozen to hundreds of processes. But what if you have only one shoot? Be content with one bush? Leave it for reproduction and never know what sweet potato tastes like?
Cultivation in the middle lane can be done with cuttings. When your process begins to grow and gives sufficiently long shoots, they are cut off and divided into parts with 4 nodes. Large leaves are cut off or removed to reduce moisture loss. You can hold it for several days in water and drop it off, well moistening the earth around. You can propagate by layering, sprinkling the stem in several places with earth.
Landing and care
Rooted processes are buried in the ground by 6 cm.
Rows are placed at a distance of 70 cm. Can be planted in a square-nesting manner. If your variety is not large, then between the plants a distance of 30 cm is sufficient.
Especially watering is not required. It is necessary to ensure that the soil under the bushes does not dry out. Otherwise, the plant will begin to feed itself with stocks of tubers. But it does not tolerate stagnation of water.
Yam stalks and leaves cover the earth around with a dense carpet. Therefore, the soil under them does not dry out very much. Watering is stopped a couple of weeks before the harvest.
Top dressing is carried out not more than once a month.
If the stems are placed on props, the soil around the plant is regularly loosened. This does not allow the formation of a dense crust that does not allow air to pass through, destroys weeds that can drown yam.
Cultivation in the middle lane is simplified because there are no pests of sweet potato. Only occasionally cases of damage by a fungus are recorded. Therefore, with an increase in humidity (frequent rains and high temperatures), sweet potato can be treated with antifungal drugs (Fitoverm).
Storage
The cultivation of sweet potatoes in central Russia is hampered by the fact that it is difficult to preserve the harvest for a long time. Tubers are well preserved in cellars and cellars. But at high humidity and low temperatures can rot. The optimum storage temperature is from 13 to 15 degrees, moisture - up to 90%. If your cellar is very wet, do not store planting material in it. Better bring it into the house and put it in the coolest place. And tubers intended for food, use in the first half of winter.