Sweet Potatoes and Shallots to Savor in Winter

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Read more for recommended sweet potato and shallot varieties for growing and cooking.
Read more for recommended sweet potato and shallot varieties for growing and cooking.
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Start sweet potato slips in pots.
Start sweet potato slips in pots.
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Peel shallot sections like you would garlic cloves.
Peel shallot sections like you would garlic cloves.

Having access to stored root vegetables gives a sense of comfort to the gardener-cook. There they are, always ready to bulk up a meal with their earthy flavors. But sometimes we long for the wide variety the garden yielded in summer, and then it’s time to try some new storage crops that are popular in cooking but not often grown at home. How about planting a bed of sweet potatoes or growing sweet potatoes from slips? And, for a gourmet treat, how about planting shallots? Both are easy to grow and easy to keep, since neither requires (or does well in) the moist cold of a root cellar. Sweet potatoes and shallots even pair well in cooking — one luxuriously sweet and the other pungent, with a subtle flavor all its own.

Growing Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are one of the most nutritious and sustaining foods you can grow. They’re not related to the usual “Irish” potatoes. Nor are they yams, as the bright-orange varieties are sometimes called. (The dark-skinned, white-fleshed Japanese yams sold in markets are sweet and tasty but not commonly grown in U.S. gardens.)

To succeed with growing sweet potatoes, choose a spacious section of your garden that hasn’t been heavily amended with manure. The soil should be moderately fertile for the tubers to plump up, but too much nitrogen can lead to lush, leafy vines and the skinny, underdeveloped tubers that I jokingly call “fingerling sweet potatoes.” Don’t add lime unless the soil’s pH is very low because sweet potatoes like slightly acidic soil. The soil they thrive in is deeply dug, so that the long roots can penetrate it, and very well-drained. If your soil is heavy, dig or till in a generous amount of compost, and probe the bed with a broadfork or a common digging fork to open up channels for water and air.

The other key ingredients in growing sweet potatoes are sun and heat. While you’re enduring the summer doldrums, your sweet potatoes will be rejoicing. Where summers are cool, gardeners often compensate by planting tubers into sheets of black infrared-transmitting plastic, or growing them in a greenhouse, or both.

  • Published on Dec 6, 2016
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