Massive 300 POUND Sweet Potato Harvest!

Hey guys, I am crouched behind my four-wheeler hiding from the wind or at least trying to because it is sweet potato digging time A little backstory. I planted a lot of sweet potatoes, but not a lot actually grew because It was really hot and really dry. And if you know anything about planting sweet potato slips they're just like basically rooted cuttings of a sweet potato plant and Mmm a quarter or a third or somewhere in that range Maybe half who knows fried in the Sun. So I'm about to Dig these up and see just how many I did end up getting My original plan was to include some of them in the fall CSA and it just did not happen So now I get to hoard them all to myself Which I'm not mad about at all I could eat sweet potatoes every single day and never get tired of it. It also is a really good thing to have Like in your pantry like sir, I don't want to say survival food, but you know like food that lasts sweet potatoes for me Keep a lot better than regular starchy potatoes So they don't get like mushy and soft halfway through the winter like regular potatoes can sometimes do in my experience and Yeah, I'm hoping that there's a lot underneath It's one of those things where you never know what you're gonna get. So let's start the process of peeling all of this landscape fabric up to find the potatoes underneath So I definitely underestimated how Heavy those vines were gonna be But I got one row cleared. So let's see what I got I think I only got three or four plants in this whole row that made it so we'll see. Oh My gosh Too little baby okay, so That was exciting. The way a sweet potato grows is not like a regular potato a regular potato kind of It grows the plant up and then it goes out like this So you'll find potatoes like near the top But they're relatively flat sweet potatoes grow down. Usually they usually point down in groups of like five ish or Slightly less if your sweet potato makes a Potato the literal size. I Never in my life you guys like and something has even eaten it. So like how big was it before? I am finding some pet some damage probably a little bowl or something underneath the ground So I hope my whole patch isn't bitten But this is what I got out of the first hole. These little baby ones are cute That's a good sign we could be in for a massive sweet potato haul, so let's see what else I can dig up, you know I've unearthed some so you can actually kind of see how it grows the plant would come out of here and then they all just Kind of stick around Which makes them easy to dig because there's not gonna be that many hiding from you, but I do see some more massive Potatoes, so let's stick them out. That was fun. It all stayed together You can see some little evil thing has been munching on some but like this is the size of a human like this Hold on you know those like models in school like this is definitely a model of a human stomach does not not look like It's also massive now If you were going to sell these okay, let's so let's talk marketing you would not want massive Sweet potatoes you would want These little guys, you know sellable size You can have a handful of them in your grouping But Oops, once I got past a certain point and I knew that I wasn't going to be selling these I was just like well, let's just see how big they can get shall we? So I left them in there. We've gotten a minor frost You can see back here the brown just like the tips got frosted So it didn't kill the whole plant, but it is time to dig them up So if I wanted to sell these I would have dug them up weeks ago But I didn't and so now I get to harvest giant sweet potatoes and that's just exciting Oh my god Another giant one. Oh My Goodness, I mean this is still in the ground like here's my hand for reference That is a big tater Do you see how giddy I'm getting like this is like Christmas I'm like wow Um And I'm pretty sure Jess from roots and refuge just posted this week the same thing that I've probably said in videos before But every time I do something I expect it to fail like every time I put a seed in the ground I'm like, it's probably not gonna germinate every time I plant something I'm like, it's probably not gonna work. And so then when you get surprised like this I I mean this Is like a human baby like this is heavier than my newborn children were but it's a potato and I This just makes me giddy it makes me giggle look at this I drew this Isn't that fun? This is like a gardener's best day ever Regular-sized potatoes. This would be large for a grocery store, you know Then there's this You know that scene in Harry Potter when they pulled the screaming things out of the ground and it's like that's what this feels like This is like a five-person sweet potato or more This is fun. This is a fun day. I'm like I liked it. I Feel like an archaeologist I'm like, oh we got a big one boys and I'm dusting off as to not Ruin the delicacy This potato, but it's another big one And that's exciting Come on, I really should have like a broad fork with me or something Might have to go get one Okay, this one would have been so big but I broke the end off and like there's a good another six inches of But I can't get out of the ground I am however, okay, so this was the end of the first row Let me gather them all and show you what I got. Well, this is what I got off of six sweet potato plants and And while sweet potatoes take up a massive amount of space, I mean their vines go everywhere It's so worth it To pull out Like stuff that's making me giggle right now I needed this I needed a fun bright day, okay But with that being said I'm going to Harvest Because I'm gonna have to rip all this out like it's gonna take me a while so I'm gonna get to work and then I will show you my massive sweet potato haul at the end and we'll weigh it and We're gonna tally up what we got exactly how many plants? And how many pounds? And I'll tell you at the end because I think I've giggled enough about sweet potatoes And I'm sure I'm gonna have the exact same reaction all the way through so I'll show you what I got at the end I just want to mention that sweet potato vines are a lot heavier than they look I Am not having fun anymore. This part isn't fun. I like revealing what's underneath. I Do not like this Gotta be a better way, right? My husband always says Wait till I get home. I'll help you But what if I don't want to what if I want to do it right now and no one's here Maybe if I start at the end But I look frazzled I feel frazzled Maybe if I just pull a little bit by a little bit Okay, I Did it? That's actually really heavy. I'm seeing bared round for the first time in four months or more and Now all the hard work's done and I can get to the fun part which is digging the potatoes out of the ground When I tell you I feel like an archaeologist like I'm not kidding. Like I'm Excavating something magical right now. Oh my lord Never in my life you guys What in the world? Is in my soil Sweet potatoes seem to love whatever I Have going on. I mean Okay, let's separate them. Here's a really good sized sweet potato Here's one half-rotten and it kind of smells and I don't want that it's like a heart and Then you have this How? It's much later in the day as you can see I had two helpers But these are my mounds of sweet potatoes and I'm gonna be honest with you guys. I'm really tired. So I'll probably Catch up with you tomorrow on weighing them. All right yesterday was summer today. It's winter here We are we're gonna weigh all the sweet potatoes that we picked out of the ground yesterday Just for fun because I never keep good records and this is me trying to make an effort. I keep a good record Basically, we have this Deer scale What's it called? A dead weight scale rigged up to a basket and we're just going to Weigh it Basket by basket Okay Like look like most of them are this size. That's All right, we got our first full basket and that's 50 pounds remember that 50 more pounds that marks 100 pounds so far. Okay, we're at 150 now Oh Great you got it on camera. That's awesome. Why'd you dug down? I Lost count see this is why we do tally marks so you don't lose count. It's he can't count 200 250 Okay, the final weigh-in I had roughly a hundred plants A few of those oddly did not make sweet potatoes. So this is about probably 95 plants. I got 306 pounds of sweet potatoes could have actually been Closer to 310 because we've eaten sweet potato fries out of this stash But yeah, that is a crap ton of food That didn't sound very nice to be talking about food and crap in the same sentence But I'm freezing and I'm over this so I will show you How I'm gonna cure these in my greenhouse and then that will conclude my sweet potato video Back out in the greenhouse. I have them all laid out on my greenhouse tables basically you want to cure your sweet potatoes because it turns the starches in the sweet potato into sugars For whatever reason I'm not a scientist and I don't know that but I'm gonna be honest with you guys I've grown sweet potatoes before and haven't cured them and it's been fine But since I have so much to lose this time if it went bad, I'm just gonna follow the rules On what they tell me to do so to cure your sweet potatoes you need a warm humid dark environment and how I'm gonna create that is Obviously, it's not gonna be a real warm in here today because the Sun isn't out But even on a cooler day like today if the Sun was out, it would be hot in here So you need your place to be about 80 to 85 degrees? And I feel pretty confident that It'll be fine. You just you don't want to let them freeze though because like a potato when it freezes it turns to mush So that's important But what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna throw this old blanket Over the top that will create the damp or the dark environment plus it's a little bit damp So that will hold in the moisture so that your potatoes don't dry out and that's it I'm gonna leave it here for a week or two And then I will come and store them how I'm normally gonna store them if you have a cool basement, that's a good place But honestly last year I stored them in my pantry and they kept literally all winter I find that sweet potatoes keep a lot better for me. Anyway, they're a lot Less fussy than a regular potato. And so going into this winter, I don't know about you, but the world's probably Not done surprising us if you want to say so being prepared isn't a bad idea and I feel really good about us having 300 pounds of sweet potatoes in the basement now while it wouldn't be You know the most amazing dinner every day to have sweet potatoes every day We're definitely gonna live and we're gonna live well because Sweet potatoes are delicious So, thank you guys for watching me Grow 300 pounds of sweet potatoes for my family and next year you can do the same thing but now I'm gonna go inside and get Comfy clothes on like I'm not already wearing comfy clothes every day, but like extra fluffy. I'm freezing it turned into winter overnight I'm not happy about it And I need to cuddle up with like a cup of hot something hot coffee hot tea hot toddy something Anyway, thank you guys for watching until next time