This is a picture of 2024 sweet potato harvest.

Here is sweet potato harvest number 1 for 2025.

The smaller ones are from a sweet potato slip grown in a 50-gallon grow bag while the bigger ones were pulled from the ground. What a difference, right?! To put the size into perspective, I weighed each and the larger ones averaged almost 3 pounds (1.40 kilograms) each.

I was going to wait to harvest these but these were peeking out from underneath the mulch. So, this is certainly not the last sweet potato harvest of 2025.

These are of a variety called “Murasaki” and average a 120-day window from transplant to harvest. Counting back to the transplant date of May 31, 2025, I believe I’m approaching harvest. My initial impressions upon pulling them out were “Holy cow, I grew some beasts,” and “What in hell did I do to get these enormous sweet potatoes?”

What did I put to make them grow huge? Other than water, not much. I put a handful of the same fertilizer I used to plant the other vegetables into the soil when I first planted these and a handful of bone meal about a month after and that’s all. Beginner’s luck, maybe?

My mom saw what I had pulled from the ground and asked if I put blood in the soil. I told her no. I would never put blood to grow sweet potatoes, not even blood meal. It’s all nitrogen and what I need to grow sweet potatoes is phosphorus. That’s ridiculous, I thought. She later explained that she recently watched a video about the largest sweet potatoes emerging a year after thousands of soldiers were slain on a battlefield. I feel like that’s a coincidence or there’s something else at play.