Weird question about sweet potatoes. I have grown them for years in NM, moved to MO, lost a crop to the
deer and
rabbits, and am trying a few again this year. Someone said something that made me look up stuff, and now I have a weird concept I'd LOVE to know if it's accurate. She said they root where the vines hit and put out more potatoes there. Interesting, in NM my vines sprawled onto mulched areas, to conserve
water, they didn't try to root anyplace. What I found was that yes, they do grow potatoes where they root, IF the rooted area is cut off from the main stem, by humans or nibblers. Is this true? Does anyone cut theirs off? Or do you not need to?
There's a growing technique for strawberries called a walking bed, where you brush the runners in one direction, then cut them off, and they are the next year's plants, the parent plants get mulched. The next year you brush the runners again, and cut off the parent again, and the line of plants walks up and down the bed over the years, so you always get a good crop, and the soil is always fertile where they grow, as you have been able to work it. I wonder if you can walk sweet potatoes sort of like that, plant at one end, brush the vines down the bed, let them root, cut them loose, brush their vines, and at the end of the season end up with a bed full of potatoes from fewer starts. Anyone ever done this? It's either a really cool idea, or utterly wrong, love to know which!! :)
Random: the reason I got into growing sweet potatoes was I went to Biosphere2 in Tuscon, they had a bad time, almost starved to death, had to end the experiment early. The ONLY crop they had thrive was sweet potatoes. When the experiment was ended, the people had orange skin due to eating nothing but sweet potatoes. Any crop that is THAT easy to grow, I'm in!! :D