Monday, December 9, 2013

The Dingess Purple Sweet Potato

Two Slips survived to make some beautiful sweet potatoes
Dingess Purple Sweet Potatoes were probably one of my favorite sweet potatoes to harvest this year. This was not only because the plant exhibited vigorous growing vines to begin with, but because the harvest is of marketable size and shape. Unlike the All Purple, which may root a foot under the surface, this variety tends to root near the top in more round tubers - making harvest much easier.


The younger slips and vines of the Dingess Purple can be hairy in appearance.


I would like to say that Dingess Purple will be one of my main varieties for next year, but I still need to do a taste test and rate each of my varieties accordingly. Though there is some anecdotal information about the taste of this variety on Tomatoville, there is nothing like doing a taste comparison to determine what variety will work best for the long-run.


My Dingess Purple Crop just as it came out of the ground.



After harvesting the first Dingess Purple potatoes, I became concerned that the interior may not contain a dark enough flesh. To determine the general color of this variety I cut a cross section of a smaller potato to see how it looked.



Dingess Purple Color looks good.



A long Dingess Purple Sweet Potato
  

 

A decent-looking Dingess Purple Sweet Potato

 
 
Though the harvest was not as much as it could have been (compared with the Purple Delight), it was over 15 pounds. Dingess Purple does an incredible job producing sweet potatoes that are just the right size for the market. As long as the flesh of this variety exhibits good taste and texture I will be growing this variety for many years to come.

   
The Dingess Purple Vines produced mostly marketable Sweet Potatoes

2 comments:

  1. How was the taste and texture?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Mark. Welcome to my blog.

      The taste is sweet, like a sweet potato. The texture is relatively smooth. Dingess Purple was the best variety I ever trialed. In fact, I still own it and grow it even up here in Northern California. When living in Arizona, I tried growing Stokes as well but wasn't really satisfied with the results.

      Sorry Stokes. Dingess Purple remains, by far, my favorite purple sweet potato variety!

      Delete

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