In this video we share our Journey of growing Sweet Potatoes OUTDOORS in the UK over the last 6 years – The successes and the challenges and the things we’ve learnt along the way. An largely un-grown crop, which – Yes! You can grow in the UK ๐
We are Dan & Laurie and our land is called Freedom Forest – Its 3 acres in the South of England where we are creating an edible oasis and trying to provide as much for ourselves, from our land as possible, where we are completely off grid.Our food growing journey began together in 2017 when we created our first No dig lasagne bed. Every year we grow more and more and now we are currently around 60-70% self sufficient in our food needs. Our style and methods are inspired by permaculture and we try to be thoughtful about how and what we do, to be as gentle on the planet as possible. In our videos you can follow our journey as we share our experiences and what we get up to at Freedom Forest.
We are MASSIVELY grateful that you choose to watch our Videos and support us in this way already, however, If you appreciate and get value from what we share and would like to help us a little more, you can become a Freedom Forest Patreon (link below).
In return your name will appear in the end credits of our videos and we’ll message you a password for the ‘members area’ of our website where we share a few more of our favourite recipes exclusively for our Patreon’s ๐
https://www.patreon.com/freedomforestlife
Enjoy & Thanks for Watching
โ๏ธ๐ฟ Peace and Plants
Full Videos:
2020 Harvest ๐ https://youtu.be/GBhQUWa08rs
2021 Harvest ๐ https://youtu.be/9wdOSFKlgX4
2022 Harvest ๐ https://youtu.be/0o4S828uPsE
2023 Harvest ๐ https://youtu.be/Q4ByKdoNyok
#freedomforestlife #sweetpotatoes #growingsweetpotatoes #nodig #sweetpotatoharvestUK
24 Comments
Have you thought about getting a Patterdale Terrier to help keep the rats down, just a natural way of dealing with a rodent problem. Only thing is they may like to dig holes in the garden. Iโm going to try sweet potatoes nxt year, I shall see how well they do in a large container. Thanks for the video.
Would love to come visit your wonderful food forest. Do you have open days, or would it be possible to visit? I am self sufficient in most foods too…thank you for all your content – its very inspiring!
Very impressive indeed! ๐๐พโค
Looking at it from the rats' point of view, they've found an amazing hotel restaurant where they can bring up their families undisturbed. It's reliable and predictable, and so easy to make nests in. I suspect they will particularly like using this hotel later in the season when there's less other kinds of food around. Perhaps if you harvested earlier, you would get more of your share. Or perhaps you could interplant with things the rats aren't so keen on. We did find with our Irish potatoes that the longer we leave them in the ground, the more rat damage we get.
Hi Folks, If you'd like to see the full length vidoes of each years harvest, you'll find the video links in the description of this video here. Or check out our Sweet Potato Growing PLAYLIST for full videos on growing undercover too ๐ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOidPRQofoMMQnV_40S6dUq7nxtcMY5w9 ๐โ๐ฟ
Where do you buy them?
A very useful video. Thank you. I live in the SE of England and wondered if I could grow sweet potatoes. I had a Jack Russel, who was a brilliant mouser. She probably would have loved catching rats if we had had any.
Just watching this now, I hope yiu mention all the varieties cos it is hard get these going in ๐ฌ๐ง im.n.west. love ya vids lovely couple ๐
The Rodents are a pain in crops, they love pumpkin and Pineapples too ๐
These are hard to get online ๐ฌ๐ง
I will take note about T65 and chase some down for 2025, thank you. I have just harvested by Sweet Potatoes for my first time and somewhat dissapointed by an excess of slug damage. The slips I bought were Beauregard which grew well but got hit and Evangaline which had a terrible crop. Lesson learnt there so I'll try and copy you next year as I have just got my own field at last! Edit just remembered that it was great information to hear about the wound healing capabilities.
How do i plant,i do have woodchip.
Great video. May be the sweet potatoes might be viewed as sacrificial to some degree, keeping the rats from damaging other crop yields?! If you dominate them too much they'll likely move elsewhere on site and do it all again to another plant. Good luck!
I never thought UK can have such a beautiful big sweet potato harvest โค๐ฎ
Wow that is amazing! Ive always wondered about sweet pots and look at that!
Thank you for sharing!
Thinking about how we keep rats away from chickens: a barrier – wire mesh or something solid like tiles – going 12" deep stops them burrowing into an area. So if you could sink a barrier round your sweet potato patch and then cover the planted area with wire mesh (holes smaller than an inch) and fix it to your barrier then that should work. Lots of work to set up but won't hurt the rats.
Have you thought about getting cats ๐
6 years is a long time to wait though
Just amazing. Very encouraging. You might consider whether you can find a couple of young feral cats to house in the garden. Rat plagues do seem to be cyclical – like rabbit plagues – but there are always some around and they can multiply very quickly. I always had rat problems until I tamed a feral cat. Cats and open ground are a problem – they always think you've kindly provided them with new toileting facilities – but if you cover any open ground with hay or similar this shouldn't be a problem. The main thing is, the cats should be out at night (but of course should have shelter). Also, rats need water to drink so I would feed the cats (they'll still catch rodents, it's hardwired in a feral cat) and provide shelter for them near any water sources or near any access route to water. Rats are creatures of habit. They always stick to the same route if it has proved safe in the past. I think they must leave scent trails. Your sweet potato patch has probably become a thing of rat legend, passed down from one generation to the next!
Thanks for the Murphy time lapse ๐ ๐
What are your Taro Harvests like? Do you leave them in the ground over Winter?
Great video ๐ Sorry to hear about the increasing rat issue, hope you manage to find a way round this going forward ๐ How do you cure and store these potatoes? I've grown some for the first time this year but not 100% confident how to best prepare them for storage ๐
Well done that more pp should be doing
You guys are really inspirational, being able to stay positive in the face of those nasty rats! Our cat had cornered a rat up a tree, but we never found out if it got caught, so I was also pretty worried about our sweet potatoes! But fortunately we had no tunnels or chewing.
Unfortunately, we grew entirely the wrong variety for the most part! The majority of our slips this year were the Okinawan type (white skin, lavender flesh). It was very hit or miss. We got a handful of nice tubers, but many slips just didnt have anything, or sent runners out several feet before producing a single potato. Not sure if T65 is available here in the States, but there is a variety called Georgia Jet here that is very prolific and cool weather tolerant. I'm going to give those a try next year, as here in Oregon, we have very similar heat levels to the UK, perhaps a slight bit warmer in the peak of summer. I also put a low tunnel over our main bed, and have some fabric grow bags against south walls for extra warmth. I was surprised about our yield this year. Last year we got 35 lbs from about 40sq ft. We planted about 4x the slips compared to last year, and only eked out 5 more pounds, likely due to a cooler year in general combined with the Okinawan variety's inconsistency. Next year we'll have some raised beds, so that could help too. This year was a big learning lesson!