wrote:


Thinking ahead to next year's garden...

Both my husband and I very much like sweet potatoes.
They've become awfully expensive though. And I detest the
commercial 'canned yams' - awful sugar-laden objects that
look like...well, never mind what they look like.

OK, so assume I grow them next year.

How can I preserve them?

The usual way - just keep in a cool, dry place - is out.

I don't have a cool dry place. Our house is tiny, tiny,
tiny with no extra room for sweet potatoes (and not cold
enough anyway).

Our (unheated) garage is large, but will be way too cold in
winter (it gets down to around -20 Fahrenheit or colder here
each winter).

We have no cellar. We have an unheated attic but it's
inaccessible, neither of us can get into it. The attic
would probably be way too cold anyway.

I have a lovely new dehydrator. I have the luxury of a
large freezer, although it pretty much fills up with garden
produce each fall. I will buy a pressure canner if I think
I'd use it enough to justify the cost.

Has anyone canned, dried, or frozen sweet potatoes with good
results?

Thanks!

Pat

Hi, Pat.
We cook them in the microwave, cut them in half lengthwise, scrape out
the flesh, mash it up a bit, put it in containers and freeze. We find
it works very well for us. We also have a dehydrator and, although
we've never tried it, I don't think home dried sweet potatoes would
work out very well but, I've been wrong before.
As to growing your own, be aware that they are a very long season
vegetable. We're not that much North of you and Gerry starts ours in
early February but, they don't get planted out 'till there is
absolutely (hopefully) no danger of frost. She starts the slips from
organically grown sweet potatoes, ones that haven't been treated with
chemicals to retard sprouting, then babies them along until planting
out time. BTW, they are a very attractive plant, make a good ground
cover too.
Good luck and most of all, have fun.

Ross