What ate my sweet potatoes?

[Mamasan]

I am so enjoying this community of gardeners and a place to pose my questions! Today is our first true freeze of the year, but I am remembering the summer, and planning for an even better season next year...

So, I grew some sweet potatoes up here in the PNW--it was a warm, mostly dry summer for us and I went against local common sense to grow sweet potatoes. In the 3 locations I experimented with, they grew in a range of poorly to quite nicely. However, most of the tubors had pockets of 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep in them. The holes were healed and the potatoes were still good, so the damage must have occurred earlier in their development.

I imagine some soil-born bug got to them...but I am not sure what it might have been. Anyone have an idea of what happened, or what I should do next summer?

Chuck, if you read this, would this be another occasion for "spinosad"?

 

[Chuck]

I am so enjoying this community of gardeners and a place to pose my questions! Today is our first true freeze of the year, but I am remembering the summer, and planning for an even better season next year...

So, I grew some sweet potatoes up here in the PNW--it was a warm, mostly dry summer for us and I went against local common sense to grow sweet potatoes. In the 3 locations I experimented with, they grew in a range of poorly to quite nicely. However, most of the tubors had pockets of 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep in them. The holes were healed and the potatoes were still good, so the damage must have occurred earlier in their development.

I imagine some soil-born bug got to them...but I am not sure what it might have been. Anyone have an idea of what happened, or what I should do next summer?

Chuck, if you read this, would this be another occasion for "spinosad"?

I think what has happened to your sweet potatoes is that they were attacked by wire worms. Spinosad will work somewhat as a drench for them but what would be better is Bt used as a drench when you know that you have tubers. I would use both. I would use the spinosad when the tubers just start to form and then I would follow up a little later with a Bt drench. Wire worms are pretty tough critters

 

[alexiskilgannon]

^^ I was going to comment worms as well. It sounds to me like worms got a hold of your potatoes for a bit. You're braver than I am because I probably would have avoided the potatoes like the plague. I'm glad that they didn't come out gross and you could still use them.

 

[Corzhens]

I agree with @Chuck that's the bane of sweet potatoes, the borer worms. We call it ULALO which gives a bad taste to the tuber. That's why farmers who raise sweet potato as crops would plow the soil and clean it of pests before planting. But for hobbyists like us, what we can do is to plant another crop like cassava or other vegetables so the worms will go away and after one cropping then you can plant sweet potato again.

 

[Mamasan]

I think what has happened to your sweet potatoes is that they were attacked by wire worms. Spinosad will work somewhat as a drench for them but what would be better is Bt used as a drench when you know that you have tubers. I would use both. I would use the spinosad when the tubers just start to form and then I would follow up a little later with a Bt drench. Wire worms are pretty tough critters

Thanks for that...botherations! We just love sweet potatoes so much, I will indeed give it one more try. Thanks for the info.