Sweet Potato

[DUMBDOG]

How far north has any one grown sweet potatoes?

[Pat]

We had them in NW Ohio.

Pat

[DUMBDOG]

I did order 100 plants, will try them and see how it goes.

[Pat]

Sure hope they work out OK. I'd hedge my bets and not put too many of them out till frost danger was pretty remote. If you have any masonry surfaces, walls or whatever that you could plant just on the south side of that would offer some protection too. If you put all your eggs (taters?) in one basket (location) at the same time then a late frost could spoil your fun.

Hope you have a super crop. Some of our steak houses around these parts now offer a baked sweet potato substitution for an "Irish" potato and given the chance I leave my heritage behind and go for the baked sweetie with a liittle butter and brown sugar. A medium sized steak, a good size sweet potato, and a moderate salad and I am good. With a little butter and brown sugar on a sweet potato and you HAVE DESSERT.

Good luck,

Pat

[DUMBDOG]

They do not even ship them to ND until the end of May.

They will just be put on in the garden with the rest of the produce, no walls etc. out there, but will have covers available if needed.

[Pat]

Well lets see if I can recall the approximate date of the last frost or when frost risk is below some small value like one percent...

Lets see now... Early June sometime?

Pat

[Bird]

Yep, Pat, a steak, salad, and sweet potato makes a nice meal, but we just never put the brown sugar on it; just butter. But my wife's family in West Virginia baked their sweet potatoes about half done, then split them (cut then in half) lengthwise, put butter and brown sugar on them, and finished baking them as a dessert all the time.

[DUMBDOG]

It has really become quite goofy with the frost dates up there, in the five years that I have been in the garden business, some years I have had a frost in June and others none or very light after the first of May. Last year I planted the beans the first week of May, one very light frost after that which put them back a couple of days. Should have transplanted all of the peppers and tomatoes then. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[Pat]

The typical sweet potato is sweet enough without brown sugar but a little bit of brown sugar isn't a bad thing.

I think the restaurants do the bake half way thing then do the butter and brown sugar too like you said.

Dang, making me have a hankerin' for a sweet tater and I got nary a one in stock. Oh well, I got 3/4 of a Marie Calender pecan pie. I was with a bud the other day in Norman and we stopped by MC for him to get his favorite chocolate pie. Pies were on sale for $5.99 for any pie so I got a Kahlua for my wide and a pecan for me. This with 15 lbs of pecan nutmeats in a bag on the counter fresh back from the nut cracker being cracked and blown and hand checked for oops by us. It was my friends fault, I would have never stopped at MC's if it wasn't for him.

Pat

[Bird]

Pat, I like brown sugar all right, and even keep some on hand to make my chocolate chip cookies, but just never think about it when we have sweet potatoes. But I smoked a brisket today, so no sweet potato; just beef, beans, cole slaw, onion slices, barbecue sauce, and bread. I don't often smoke a whole brisket when we don't have company, but we can freeze some of it for later.

I sliced all the brisket, but tomorrow I'll cube some of the slices to make another of my favorite meals, and a very simple one at that. I just put the cubed beef, an 8 ounce can of tomato sauce, two cans of mixed vegetables, a little water, and a little salt and pepper in the crockpot, then make a batch of cornbread to go with my homemade vegetable beef soup. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]