Recently, I grew sweet potatoes using planter bags. The planting media was a mixture of poultry manure and straw. I filled 1/4 of the planter bag with straw and poultry manure, then filled it with organic waste from the kitchen, such as fruit peels, vegetable stems or leaves, food leftovers, fish bones, etc. I then covered it again with straw and poultry manure up to 3/4 of the size of the planter bag. This way, the waste wouldn’t smell and wouldn’t be disturbed by cats. Usually, I let the planting media rest for 2-4 weeks to let the decomposition process happen naturally, but for the sweet potato plants, I immediately planted the prepared sweet potato slips.
I got the sweet potato slips from several sources. The purple slips were from Zeze Zahra’s cabin home, while the red, Japanese, and Cilembu sweet potato slips were from my own propagation, using sweet potatoes I bought from the grocery store.
After planting the slips, I covered them again with the planting media, filling up 90% of the planter bag’s capacity. I used planter bags with sizes 35 and 50 liters for this.
After some time, the sweet potato plants on my roof grew well and hopefully, I can harvest them during Ramadan, for making “kolak” (a traditional Indonesian dessert based on palm sugar or coconut sugar, coconut milk, and pandanus leaf) or for suhoor (the meal eaten before dawn during Ramadan, after which people fast until after sunset) with boiled sweet potatoes.