Sweet potato has a larger growing range than the common potato and can thrive from sea level up to nearly 9,800 feet. In the final episode of this season of Climate Cuisine, we’ll talk with a researcher at the International Potato Center in Peru about the incredible root, and a sustainability teacher in Costa Rica who has figured out how to grow everything she and her family consume.

In this episode of Climate Cuisine, Clarissa chats with:

• Ana Gaspar, a Costa Rica-based permaculture teacher in Costa Rica who operates a permaculture farm and education center called Finca Tierra 

• Bettina Heider, a researcher at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Peru 

Episode highlights:

 Meet Finca Tierra

• Clarissa introduces her friend Ana Gaspar, who lives in Costa Rica with her husband. They operate Finca Tierra, a nine-acre permaculture farm and education center where they teach permaculture design courses.

• Ana discusses the reasoning behind her decision to live off-the-grid.

About the Sweet Potato

• Did you know that, despite its name, the sweet potato is not a true potato? It’s in the morning glory family and is only distantly related to the common potato.

• Bettina, whose research with Peru’s International Potato Center specializes in the sweet potato, explains this plant’s much larger ecological ability to grow in different conditions than the common potato.

• Clarissa shares that sweet potato was first domesticated in the Americas over 5,000 years ago. Now, there are over 7,000 cultivars.

Cooking Sweet Potato in Costa Rica

• Ana lists some of the many ways that sweet potato is prepared in Costa Rica. Boiled and smashed with a little bit of salt, baked whole in a wood-fire oven and stuffed with vegetables, or turned into chips—the dishes are endless.The Borucas, an indigenous tribe in Costa Rica, fry sweet potato leaves with eggs. In Afro-Caribbean cooking, sweet potato can be used in rondón (also known as rundown), a coconut milk-based soup.

• At Finca Tierra, Ana also bakes sweet potato in coconut oil and thyme, turns it into veggie patties, or serves it with tomato sauce and rice.

Ubiquity of Sweet Potato in Taiwan

• In Taiwan, the sweet potato has been consumed since the 17th century.

• They are often consumed boiled or roasted. For breakfast, some people cube sweet potatoes and throw them in rice porridge.

• Given sweet potato’s ubiquity in Taiwan, the word “sweet potato” in Taiwanese is used to refer to people whose families have been in Taiwan for hundreds of years.

• Clarissa shares her simple way of stir-frying sweet potato leaves with salt, oil, and garlic.

A Highly Adaptable Carb

• A highly adaptable carb, sweet potato can be used to feed animals. For example, it can help to increase dairy production.

• Some varieties of sweet potato mature quickly and can be harvested in less than 90 days. These varieties are useful in some places in Europe where the window of time during which conditions are warm enough for sweet potato is quite small. They’re also useful to fit in the short period between rice-growing seasons.

The Main Problem Facing Sweet Potatoes 

• The main problem that the sweet potato faces is the sweet potato virus disease (SPVD), for which there is no one, foolproof way to combat. Weevils, pests that live in the ground, present another potentially destructive problem for growers.

• However, overall, the sweet potato is a robust crop. Bettina considers it a climate change winner, with the potential to withstand heat and drought.

How to Grow Them

• To propagate sweet potato, you can place a sweet potato tuber on the counter, let it sprout, and when the shoots are around 30cm, cut them and plant them. 

• Bettina recommends planting them in mulch beds or mulch patches. Sweet potatoes prefer full sun and loose soil to grow large roots. If you’re working with low-lying or flat land, you should grow sweet potatoes in a raised bed or mound because they do not tolerate overly moist soil or flooding.

• Ana shares some of the benefits of growing sweet potatoes. It is high in vitamin A and also rich in antioxidants, especially the purple varieties.

• During extreme weather events, Ana puts her sweet potatoes in deep mulch patches, which prevents issues with watering them and eliminates the need to weed them.

Ana’s Journey to Self-Sufficiency

• Ana shares the journey behind how she and her husband Ian came to live a truly sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. She names Bill Mollison’s writing on permaculture as one of the primary learning tools that helped her and Ian along the way.