2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Sweet potato or sweet potato is a valuable food and forage crop. The name of the vegetable is taken from the Arawak language. In appearance, sweet potatoes resemble potatoes. Its tubers are formed as the lateral roots thicken. The color of the tubers depends on the sweet potato variety. They can be painted in various colors - white, yellow, cream, pink, purple and even red
Peru and Colombia are the birthplace of sweet potatoes, from there they spread it all over the world. Currently, this sweet culture is successfully cultivated in subtropical and tropical countries, sometimes in warm areas of the temperate zone. Indonesia, India and China are considered leaders in the cultivation of sweet potatoes, where it is positioned as "the fruit of longevity."
Botanical description
Sweet potato is a type of tuberous plants - annuals of the Ipomoea genus of the Bindweed family. The external appearance of the ground part of the sweet potato is a liana with long (2-5 m) creeping herbaceous stems-lashes, creeping along the ground, rooting in nodes. The height of the bush is 15-18 cm. The lateral roots of the sweet potato, thickening, form tubers with edible pulp. The leaves of the plant are located on long petioles and are finger-lobed or heart-shaped.
Some varieties never bloom, and bloom is also rare in the temperate zone. If the sweet potato has bloomed, then cross-pollination by bees occurs. The flowers are formed in the axils of the leaves; the corolla is rather large, funnel-shaped, white or pink in color. The ripe fruit is a four-seeded box with black or brown seeds, 3, 5-4, 5 mm in size. Tubers of different varieties are different in shape - round, elongated, ribbed. In length, sweet potato fruits reach a length of 30 cm, weight from 200 g to 3 kg. The pulp is tender, juicy, the taste depends on the variety, sweet specimens are grown for eating. This taste is due to the high concentration of glucose in the tubers. When you cut a tuber or stem, milky juice emerges. The peel of the sweet potato is thin, represented by almost all colors of the rainbow.
Growing features
Batat is a tropical culture that loves heat very much and almost does not tolerate cold. These features of the "fruit of longevity" affect the planting and growing of the plant. It is a misconception that sweet potatoes are planted in the same way as potatoes. Sweet potatoes are not planted with tubers, since having a long growing season, it will not have time to form full-fledged tubers. Almost all varieties of sweet potatoes have lost the ability to reproduce sexually, so it reproduces vegetatively. There are two ways to plant sweet potatoes - seedlings and cuttings. Cuttings are obtained from sprouted tubers or part of the stem of an adult plant in perennial culture. Optimum crop development takes place at a temperature of at least 20 ° C. Sweet potato tubers ripen in 2 - 9 months, depending on the variety and growing conditions. For planting, an open, sunny place with fertile soil is preferable.
Agricultural technology of cultivation
It is recommended to grow sweet potatoes with dived seedlings or unrooted plant cuttings. When planting by cuttings, remove large leaves, leaving short stalks. Leave 4 - 5 internodes on the planting material. With a sufficient amount of moisture, the cuttings root quickly, the roots develop on the nodes immersed in the moist layer of the earth.
You can get sweet potato seedlings from tubers. Before laying for germination, disinfect the tubers in a weak solution of copper sulfate. Get a box with sides 20 cm high, make several holes in the bottom and place it on a pallet. This is necessary so that excess moisture leaves when planting a tuber. Be sure to cover the container with tubers with foil. The ideal temperature for germination varies between 18-27 ° C, regular watering is required. After 3 - 6 weeks, long shoots appear, when 4-6 internodes are reached, they are cut off. Cuttings of 20 - 30 cm are suitable for planting. From one tuber, shoots can be cut off every 8 - 10 days. Cut cuttings are first rooted in pots, and planted in the ground when the soil is already well warmed up. In the south, it is possible to start planting sweet potatoes at the end of April. The soil should be loamy or sandy loam. Before directly planting seedlings in open ground, it should be dug to a depth of 15 - 20 cm.
Sweet potato is a drought-resistant crop, however, during the period of rooting and development of cuttings, abundant watering should be provided. During the second half of the growing season, you should not water the plant often and stop completely watering 2 weeks before harvest. The time from planting cuttings to digging out the tubers varies from 90 to 150 days. Sweet potatoes are harvested in sunny weather, usually the time of harvest is the end of October. The tubers are stored at a temperature of 10 - 16 ° C in a dry ventilated area.
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