Monday, August 06, 2012

Growing Japanese Sweet Potatoes in Melbourne

When I was in Singapore a few years back, I bought Japanese sweet potatoes - they were very cheap and they tasted like chestnuts when boiled/steamed.

The taste was so delicious that I'd eat a half-dozen in a day easily.

Best of all they were very nutritious and they cured me of my irritable bowel and constipation problems that I had been suffering since I was a child.

The common ones have a purple skin and a white flesh. The Okinawa varieties have a brown skin and purple flesh. They both taste of delicious chestnuts when cooked. I'm salivating thinking about it now.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find them being sold in Melbourne. 

The ones I usually sell are the extremely large varieties which don't taste as nice. Having said that, roasting them in slices and placing them onto beef sandwiches is excellent.

I found a site in Melbourne which talks about growing European sweet potatoes.
 
http://suburbantomato.com/2012/05/growing-sweet-potatoes-in-melbourne-part-2/#comment-13268

I bought the bullet and bought some more from an online Aussie shop for $5 each!!! I hope to have better luck growing them or have better luck on the share market to afford my food habit.

Postscript: I found that in one of the main grocery malls in Springvale, Vic - they do sell the Okinawa type of sweet potato - white skin, purple color flesh (but the Vietnamese/Chinese grocers call it another name) . It taste pretty good and I felt very healthy the whole week.

Update: I managed to source the "Satsumaio" purple skin sweet potato and planted it in Jan/Feb - but for some reason - they turned mouldy and when I pulled them out of the soil to give it a clean - "something" came along, probably a possum or rat, and ate them.

I planted the white skin "Okinawa" variant and at least one has taken root, grown leaves (which are indeed edible: I ate them) - now to see whether the "tubers" taste any good.

3 comments:

Liz said...

Thanks for the link! You've convinced me that I really should try growing these - they sound delicious and i definitely agree with the idea that you should attmept things that are difficult to get otherwise.

Yau said...

Glad to know I got someone else into this good vegetable. Please let me know how you went in planting the crop. I may learn a thing or two from your efforts.

Yau said...

Update: You can purchase them cheaply in Springvale mall. They sell them for only $3 a kg. I bought a bunch of them but the weather is so warm that some of them have started sprouting.