Harvesting Sweet Potatoes: How to Do It Correctly So It Won’t Hurt the Produce

Knowing the right way of harvesting sweet potatoes will ensure satisfying outcome that you can enjoy. It’s especially important if you also want to sell out those potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are naturally tasty and they aren’t difficult to grow either. However, proper harvesting method should be applied. Otherwise, the sweet potatoes won’t be as promising as you have expected. Plus, it may hurt your production too.

The Right Harvesting Time

• One key element in proper harvesting sweet potatoes is to know the right time to do the harvesting. It usually happens in fall because the weather typically turns to cold and the vines are withering.

• When the end of growing season approaches, you need to reduce your watering routine. Too much watering can lead to cracking and it won’t be good for storage.

• Don’t harvest too early even though you have seen the leaves turn yellowish. The plant will gain most of the weight and size quite late.

• Harvest your sweet potatoes before the first (fall) frost happens. If the frost is light, the roots can mainly survive it. But if it’s hard, the roots may be damaged or affected.

Helpful Tips

There are some handy tips of harvesting sweet potatoes if you want your crop to turn up great.

• You need to handle the harvesting potatoes carefully and gently because they easily bruise. You may want to cut (and then remove) the vines up to 2 or even 3 days before the harvesting day. Doing this will make the skins to get tougher and somewhat thicker, even only a bit.

• Loose up the soil around the crown for around 18 inches. Make sure that it’s 6 inches or 8 inches deep. After that, you can lift the potatoes gently up.

• When you have lifted the potatoes up, clean it from loose soil. You can simply brush it off, but don’t do it too hard because you don’t want to scrape the skin.

Don’t wash it either. Yes, you will have to do this manually and one potato at a time, but it will give you enough time to examine each of them.

The Curing Process

Before you learn about how to cure sweet potatoes, you need to understand why the curing process is crucial. The curing process helps sweet potatoes to achieve the full sweetness.

You want the starches to change into (natural) sugars, which are responsible for the natural sweetness of the potatoes. Not to mention that this process will also heal off the small scratches.

The best condition to cure the sweet potatoes is within a warm room having 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep the potatoes there for 7 days (10 days would be max).

In the event you can’t fulfil such a condition, cure the potatoes in a room with 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 weeks; 3 weeks top. You can also cover them with cloth or paper so they won’t lose up the humidity.

You can consider storing the sweet potatoes in dark areas in boxes. If you do the curing correctly, the sweet potatoes can last up to 6 months – even 9 months. Again, when you know the correct way of harvesting sweet potatoes, you can expect satisfying outcome.