Purple Passion is a rare purple fleshed and purple skinned sweet potato variety. Purple sweet potatoes are super cool to cook and bake with... purple pie, purple mash, purple everything! Last year was our first growing this variety and the test patch we planted in our exhibition garden did very well and produced lots of beautiful tubers. Make sure you take advantage of the easy propagation of sweet potatoes and make yourself lots of copies of this hard to find variety to plant throughout your garden and share with friends. 

Sweet potatoes are great summer crops for your raised bed or your food forest since they love love love the heat, humidity and rain. It’s native to the New World, although the site of origin and the manner in which it originated are still unknown. Plants were distributed as far as New Guinea and New Zealand before the time of Columbus, the sweet potato was an important crop related to colonization and now it’s range has extended around the world, to both temperate and tropical zones. 

This crop thrives in nutrient poor well draining soil, which we have plenty of here in South Florida. A great way to encourage the plant to produce more tubers for you is to regularly prune the vines and bonus: the leaves are edible! The greens are only edible when cooked (not raw) and contain Omega 3 fatty acids, protein, fiber, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, Vitamins A, C, K, and important B vitamins like B1, B2, B3, and B9. The sweet potato itself is a highly nutritious, calorie- filled root crop that packs less of a glycemic hit than grains, cassava or potatoes, and stores excellently.

Commercial growers cure their sweet potatoes in special rooms at 85 degrees Farenheit and 80% to 90% relative humidity for 5 to 10 days. Curing causes the conversion of starch to sugar and helps to heal cuts that could lead to rots. The roots are then stored for 6-8 weeks at 55 to 60 degrees  to further increase the sugar content. Duplicating this process would be very difficult for home gardeners, but you can at least partially cure the roots by leaving them in a garage or sunroom for a week or so (keeping them outdoors would be too humid in the fall). Spreading the roots out on a screen in a single layer is best. 

Sweet potato weevils are the main issue with growing this crop in south florida, as they eat small holes in your potatoes without you knowing. Whitefly on the underside of leaves are also an issue so make sure to check your plant throughout its growing season. 

Sweet potato is a vining plant that will sprawl throughout your garden creating a beautiful dense ground cover, which is one reason why we love growing it in the summer instead of the fall, since it can be quite competitive in a small space where you are trying to grow other annuals. If you don’t have plans for your veggie bed in the summer consider planting a few sweet potatoes and using them as a cover crop, to protect your soil from erosion and weeds. Once you buy one sweet potato plant from us you can use it to make yourself a whole farms worth of new plants if you want to, as the growing tips of the vines can be cut to 6 inch lengths, popped into a jar of water and in 6 days you'll have a fully rooted new plant.