Have you ever eaten boiled sweet potatoes?
Have you ever eaten sweet potato leaves? Yes, you could eat the stalks and leaves of the sweet potatoes. It tastes like spinach but richer in iron specially those that are red.
Have you ever wondered how you could actually grow them in your garden, too? Well, if your answer to all my questions were NO - then perhaps you should. And yes, you could grow sweet potatoes in places like where I am now - where it's wet and cold.
I love boiled sweet potatoes - yellow, purple and white sweet potatoes - it doesn't matter as long as it's sweet potatoes. Like their cousins - potatoes... they make me windy, too but I love eating sweet potatoes even though.
When I first came here I wondered whether I could actually grow them here. So I tried some time early this March.
First, I bought a kilo of sweet potatoes in the supermarket. An organic one. I boiled the rest and set aside one with a node on it. I let it soak in a glass of water and put it in the smallest of my greenhouses.
Two weeks later, it grew an embryo. The leaves were purple just like it's peel.
A week later it grew white roots.
After a few days, I found the leaves all green and there were more roots growing and 
One of the baby plants grew faster than the other so I plucked it and soaked it in some water to observe if he'd survive.
A few days later, I potted it and let it stay in the green house because the humidity and the cold in the Netherlands would surely kill it.
This was me drawing all the screenshot pic on my memo app in my Samsung Galaxy Note 1 yesterday during the break in the seminar I attended.
After two weeks, it had crawled so I harvested plenty of stalks.
I boiled the leaves with just tomatoes, onions and salmon. I put the leaves the last, I love eating half-cooked vegetables. That's how Mamay(that's what we used to call grandnana) used to cook it. It taste exactly as Mamay's. Happy memories of gardening along side Mamay flash flooded while I was eating. It brought me into tears.
These days, I still have plenty of sweet potato stalks. I propagated them. I thought they won't make till September but here's my harvest for today.
This time, I cut the leaves from the matured stalks with suckers.
I cut them shorter and put them back into the pot, hopefully they'll grow as well. It's been pretty sunny here that encourages them to grow.
This time, it joined the woked carrot, pumpkin and tomatoes in the pan for lunch. It's very easy to cook and yes, you could actually eat it. Unlike the tubers, they won't make you windy. I love them in coconut milk, garlic, onion and mackerel. Sighs.. it's almost dinner here and I'm sure getting hungry again.
Next year, I'll be doing the same but by that time, I'll be having my own space in the public garden so I'm going to grow them there. They would do better and give you more tubers on garden beds. As for now, since my garden is pretty crowded and there are plenty of aphids, they have to stay in the smaller green house. That saves them from the chem trails, too.
Curious about what sweet potato leaves taste like? Try planting them, too. You can still grow them and just let them grow inside next to a heating on winter days. However, the best time to grow them is actually in spring. Whether, there are tubers in the pot or not, I would find out when it starts getting as cold as 10 degrees here, that time, I'll have to take them down.
If you happen to know any other tips that could be helpful in growing sweet potatoes in countries with the same weather condition as The Netherlands, please feel free to write that down on the comment. SHARING IS CARING!
Do you like gardening hacks like this? Follow me @englishtchrivy!
All the screenshots of the drawing were with a Samsung Galaxy Note 1 and the rest of the pictures I took with a Samsung Galaxy A3 2016 edition.