Sweet potatoes for short season growing

I'm evaluating my garden and what I want to improve for next year. This year I planted sweet potatoes from slips I grew off a supermarket tuber. I got tiny tubers but I think i want to try again.

I am learning that there are short season sweet potatoes and I've completed a list of ones I think sounds promising, sticking with ones that are under 100 days.

Can anyone add to this list or provide their opinions about these varieties? Thanks!

Sweet potato varieties to try:

Bayou Belle- 90-110 red-skinned to garnet,  deep orange flesh, highly resistant to Rhizopus soft rot, Fusarium root rot and wilt as well as soil rot, and intermediate to resistant against root-knot nematodes, sweet and firm

Carver- 100 days, copper skin; deep orange flesh; unsurpassed flavor; short vines; easy to harvest because tubers form in a clump directly below the stem

Centennial- 90-100, copper skin; pale orange flesh; heavy yields of long, thin roots; stores well; clay tolerant

Frasier White- 90 days, white-skinned heirloom with very sweet white flesh that may turn a light green when cooked; reliable production; easy to grow and harvest

Georgia Jet- 80-90 days, pink/red skin; orange-fleshed; early harvest; very high yields; cold tolerant; stores well

Korean Purple- 90 days, purple-skinned heirloom with white flesh; high yields; very sweet

Ivis White Cream- 90 days, white-skinned heirloom, a favorite for baking, moist yet firm cream-colored flesh, adaptable plants produce dependably high yields even in the north

Tainung 65- 95 days, velvety light pink skin; creamy light golden flesh; early harvest; high yields; long vines

O'Henry- 95 days, white-skinned with sweet white flesh; creamy texture and good flavor; low, slightly bushy plants

(Unfortunately I can't seem to find any short season purple fleshed sweet potatoes. Too bad!)

I'm not familiar with most of those varieties other than Georgia Jet but I have been working for several years to breed sweet potatoes for among other things, short season. I shoot for production of food quality roots from true seed, not slips, in 100 days or less.

From my experience there is no such thing as maturity in sweep potatoes at least not in the sense of most other crops. I guess because in their original environment and in warm areas they are perennial. Maturity, to me is just the point where the roots are big enough. Flavor, storability and other important things don't seem to be effected. For example a Georgia Jet grown in Canada may just yield smaller roots compared to one grown in Georgia but the Canada ones are just fine.

In my breeding work I have shared seed with collaborators in a number of US states and other countries with mixed results. It seems the length of season is less important than the heat units. A short but warm summer will produce a nice crop where a long but cool season does not, or at least not as well.

What is the duration of your frost free season? Do you have at least a couple months of day time temps in at least in the low 80s F and nights that stay at minimum above 50?

Mark Reed wrote:
What is the duration of your frost free season? Do you have at least a couple months of day time temps in at least in the low 80s F and nights that stay at minimum above 50?

Climate change makes things so wonky so really, who knows? I'm in western Washington state, which is usually cool and wet, though July and August are usually warm/hot with very little rain and nights stay above 50. Some of that weather sneaks into the end of June and beginning of September, so 90 days is about what I can expect. (The days next to the varieties I think is supposed to be how long they take to a big enough tuber to eat.) I planted my slips at the end of June and my plants survived into October and a few freezing nights but finally died when the day temperatures dropped too. But only one root was big enough to make it worth eating. So I am hoping to find varieties that get bigger faster.

How much longer does it take to grow from seed? Everything I've read so far says not to bother if you don't have a long growing season but it sounds like you've had a different better experience. True?

Sounds like you you probably have a long enough warm season to grow some sweet potatoes.

In my experience it doesn't take any longer at all to grow from seed than from slips. Seed however is very hard to come by. I've been working on breeding varieties that produce both a good harvest and seeds in 100 days or less for about ten years now. It stared with the accidental discovery of some seeds on an ornamental variety and managed to get three of those seeds to sprout the next year. Those plants flowered and crossed with a few flowers on some old named varieties.

In following years I managed to get plants that made a lot of seeds but when grown out only about 50% or so make nice roots. They don't breed true from seed so when a really nice ones shows up the only way to propagate it is by slips. In last couple of years I have been doing that with those that make both and backcrossing to new seed sprouted ones. I hope in another couple of seasons to have an elite line of seed. Being that they have very high chance of producing nice roots and seeds.  

I have a thread about it that I haven't updated for quite some time due to being busy and my old computer crashing. You can read about it here. SP Thread

Mark Reed wrote:
I have a thread about it that I haven't updated for quite some time due to being busy and my old computer crashing. You can read about it here. SP Thread

Thank you for directing me there. Very interesting! So much new information floating around in my brain right now!

When I was young, plants seemed so cut and dry... and boring. And then in college I took a botany class to fill a graduation requirement because I thought it would be easy and not take up too much my time. That class changed me. It was like being blind and all of a sudden being able to see how much complex life was everywhere around me. I ended up spending all my free time doing extra assignments for fun!  I've continued studying and twenty years later, all I know is how very little I actually know and how much there is still is for me to learn about plants. I'm feeling like that specifically about sweet potatoes today! 😂 Last week I didn't even know that sweet potatoes made seeds and didn't know of more than half a dozen varieties.

Ten years ago I didn't know much of anything about breeding plants. I'm old enough though, that I went to school before the collapse of the educational process and am fortunate to remember basic things about genetics and inheritance from high school biology.

Jenny Wright wrote:
When I was young, plants seemed so cut and dry... and boring. And then in college I took a botany class to fill a graduation requirement because I thought it would be easy and not take up too much my time. That class changed me. It was like being blind and all of a sudden being able to see how much complex life was everywhere around me. I ended up spending all my free time doing extra assignments for fun!  I've continued studying and twenty years later, all I know is how very little I actually know and how much there is still is for me to learn about plants. I'm feeling like that specifically about sweet potatoes today! 😂 Last week I didn't even know that sweet potatoes made seeds and didn't know of more than half a dozen varieties.

That's the way it goes. I figured out a long time ago, in all areas, that the more I find out, the more I realize how little I know.