Is it worth it (for me) to grow sweet potatoes in Mauritius?

For Mauritius as a country, yes, growing sweet potatoes is absolutely worth it as a food source. That is common sense. We want food security and crop diversity. Also, sweet potato chips are yummy.

From other perspectives, there are situations where growing sweet potatoes can feel discouraging, unprofitable, or simply not make sense. It can even seem a bit “unlogical” (illogical) despite being real food that fills our bellies, while imports still dominate shelf space and shopping baskets.

We will look at this in more detail in a moment. I’ve put “for me” in brackets because I will share my own story, biases, and subjectivity. This post also ties in with a previous case study on raised beds: How Mauritius Homeowners Can Use Raised Bag Beds to Grow Healthier, Pesticide-Free Veggies and Earn on the Side: A Case Study

In that study we considered a range of vegetables, like greens (lettuce, pak choy, petsai) and roots like beetroot, but not sweet potatoes. Using a raised bag bed for sweet potatoes is the topic here. I have tested it quite a lot, and I will share my results.

Quite often, because of how profit-driven systems work, what should be healthy gets optimised for cost rather than health. Profits are made while something becomes less healthy through chemical inputs that can damage soil, leach into groundwater, and disturb ecosystems elsewhere. In some cases residues end up in food, which is not what we want.

Sweet potatoes sit well alongside other staples like potatoes for food security. For larger farms with unoccupied land or enough space to dedicate to this crop, it can make sense within a sustainability plan that diversifies both crops and revenue. You can plan several plots in rotation to keep a regular supply.

My current yield

Location: Coastal Region of Mauritius
Place: DITO’S GARDEN @ Grand Baie
Variety: Purple-skinned, white-fleshed sweet potato (Japanese/Murasaki type)

Raised bag beds filled with light brown soil, biochar inoculated in Jeevamrutham, a layer of manure, and mulch like wood chips have given me no improvement in yield compared with planting directly in the ground with nothing added. I keep getting the same yield, which is on the low side at about 1 kg per m².

I was hoping for at least 2 kg per m², and also fewer insect attacks. Many roots have small holes, which makes them look a bit unpretty. Not a big loss, most can be peeled and eaten, but still not ideal.

I am running 1 to 2 more trials with other materials: rocksand, DITO’S Vermicompost (vermicompost does have some potassium, which sweet potatoes like), and DITO’S Compost & Mulch Mix from our biocomposters. I do have some made from seaweed which could be optimal for sweet potatoes. I will avoid manure this time to reduce nitrogen. I will share the results in the future.

For reference, the 6 m bed plus the 3 m bed I bought from UDC are 120 cm wide and 30 cm high. Total area is 10.8 m² and I harvested 11 kg, which works out to 11 ÷ 10.8 = ~1.02 kg per m².

There are a few advantages with the raised bag beds over trials in open soil. I can test different mixes side by side, keep them contained, and remove or replace a mix later without changing the ground permanently. Harvest is cleaner, weeds are easier to manage, and irrigation is simpler to control.

What I think is holding yield back

Short and simple list so I can fix it:

1. Plant density
   If spacing is too wide, total yield per m² stays low even if roots look nice. In our new raised beds we have planted a lot of vines more closer, that is with a spacing of 10cm or less. This is the most dense we have ever planted.
   
2. Shallow bed and compaction
   Bed height is 30 cm. Sweet potatoes like a loose, aerated ridge. If the mix settles and compacts, roots stay skinny. I will keep the top layer fluffy with a good layer of DITO’S Compost & Mulch Mix from our biocomposters.
   
3. Nitrogen vs potassium
   Too much nitrogen pushes vines, not roots. I will dial N down and make sure K is steady. Vermicompost helps. We currently make a fertiliser from banana peels and am wondering to apply some of that additionally to the vermicompost. I also think that previously, the raised beds were too rich in Nitrogen from manures. Since I now produce a significant amount of vermicompost I can shift away from using manure completely. All manure will be processed by the worms first before application.
   
4. Pests
   The small holes suggest weevils or possibly wireworms. Timing the harvest, keeping beds well ridged and mulched, and lifting vines off the soil to reduce extra rooting should help. Rotation matters.
   
5. Water rhythm
   Bulking needs even moisture. I will aim for a steady weekly rhythm rather than feast and famine. Short, regular irrigation will be better than occasional long soaks.

How I will measure success

• Target yield: Move from ~1.02 kg per m² to 2.0 to 2.5 kg per m² in the next harvest window. A dream come true would be 4 Kgs per m².
  
• Quality: Fewer bored holes and cleaner skins.
  
• Notes to log: Spacing used, dates planted and harvested, total kg, number of marketable roots, and any pest signs.

If these tweaks lift yield above 2 kg per m², I will standardise the mix and roll it out across a few more beds. I will write down the exact recipe, spacing, watering rhythm and timing so I can repeat it calmly without chasing new variables. If not, I will draw a line under the trials and call the sweet potato project complete. No more tinkering. Two raised beds (the 9m ones) on a six month rotation give me about 10 kg each, which suits home use (with a little surplus that can either go into my veggie sales when you drop by for Kombucha or greens). That feels honest for Grand Baie and for my time. The real win is having reliable, tasty roots for the table while I put more energy into crops that work better here, like greens and cassava. Either way, I will keep notes, enjoy the harvest, and move on with peace. Just a side note, green veggies were also not performing well at all over the years, I have seen a great improvement in my raised beds since I started using DITO’S Vermicompost.

Do you need a raised bed bag to grow sweet potatoes?

A patch of good, loose ground soil is enough to grow sweet potatoes. It is an easy, low-maintenance plant. It does not require rocket science. My challenge is yield. I am trying to push it higher, and some varieties I tried have failed so far. That is part of why this blog post exists.

It is also the kind of plant that, if you do not water it regularly, you will not lose it right away, unlike more water-demanding lettuce. If it rains now and then, you are fine. You can even skip watering for longer periods, sometimes months, which means you can go hiking on weekends or take trips and, when you come back, your sweet potatoes should still be there. It is that kind of plant 🙂

For a small home garden, buying raised bed bags only to grow sweet potatoes adds a cost to consider. The bag itself is not usually the biggest expense. It is the setup work: sourcing filling materials and the labour time to fill the bag. There are still good reasons to choose this route. If you simply love eating sweet potatoes, they grow well in raised bed bags and also directly in the ground.

Reasons you might pick raised bed bags:

• Your ground soil is poor, heavy, or stony.
• You have big trees and want to reduce roots invading the plot.
• You want contained trials where you can change mixes later without altering the ground permanently.

If tree roots are a concern, place a dense geotextile under the bag, around 250 to 300 g/m². The bag fabric on its own will be pierced by strong roots. Papaya roots, for example, will go through it easily.

$$$ Can small garden home owners benefit in growing sweet potatoes?

I am sharing my perspective. It should be useful for hobby home gardeners, slightly bigger gardens, and small farms, in my opinion.

Sweet potatoes in Mauritius sell at around Rs 100 per kg on average. I wanted to grow the orange variety in particular, as it also fetches a better price. Story to follow below. Of course, different market factors can push this price up or down.

Note for future readers: Rs 100 per kg is an October 2025 snapshot. Currency debases over time, so the number will not mean the same thing later. Update it to your current costs first, then compare margins. As @AdamBLiv said:

“if money equals crystallized time, energy, your effort, your labor – then credit is belief in future and risk is entropy that leaks through that trust. I think everyone should think of credit as being civilization’s shared hallucination that tomorrow will exist.” – @AdamBLiv the Bitcoin Wizard.

In my view it is not a profitable crop for me to grow when I factor in the long wait to harvest and the work involved. It would still not be worth it nor profitable if my yield would 4x!
Workloads do vary. If you can plant directly in the ground, you can dig a small trench, lay the slips (vine cuttings), cover, water, and you are done. You will see plenty of that on YouTube. My challenge is that this approach has not given me good yield on my land in Grand Baie, Mauritius. This challenge is one of the reasons this blog post exists 😉

Sweet potatoes still have their raison d’être. If you have a larger area, they can occupy space and act as a living cover. If you are not planning to plant much else, they spread, shade the soil, and reduce other growth. We did that for a long time in the front yard and it reduced the need to cut grass.

From real-life experience, the raised bed bags give me far better returns when I grow a variety of vegetables, rather than doing a mono-crop of sweet potatoes.

Within a year, I might get one or two sweet potato harvests, while in the same period I can harvest several rounds of greens, which also sell at a better price.

I considered staggering several raised beds with orange sweet potatoes at different intervals to spread harvests through the year. Even so, it still does not outperform the model in my raised bag bed case study with vegetable diversification. To make sweet potatoes attractive for selling from my garden, I would need a much higher yield. Even doubling to quadrupling my current yield would still not make it very compelling for sales.

My dream to grow orange sweet potatoes

I did not start with a dream to grow sweet potatoes. Five years ago I had no skills for beds or planting. I had a bit of self-confidence and motivation that things would work out. I would sow seeds, get lucky, and veggies would grow. Rinse and repeat. A forever stable status quo I thought to myself. Little did I know that snails exist and birds are hungry. After the first success, the snails settled in and I kept losing plants. It became a frustration and an anxiety to see everything gone again and again. The lessons from these five years will be another story. For now, here is the dream of growing orange sweet potatoes in Grand Baie.

During the lockdowns an American named Blake came to see me. He brought a bag of orange sweet potatoes and asked if I could grow them. If I managed a harvest he would be a buyer. It felt like a good challenge with a small safety net. I would not need to find buyers the moment I had yield.

Over the last four years it never turned into a good orange sweet potato harvest. I kept trying and experimenting, searching YouTube for solutions and asking other farmers for tips. Yields stayed very mediocre. To be clear, I was not putting all eggs in one basket. I was growing other vegetables too, and along came the DITO’S Kombucha production.

In my mind the plan was simple. I would grow orange sweet potatoes, then scale them. Several beds, staggered plantings, twelve harvests per year, one each month. Quantity produced times selling price equals an income I could be happy with. At last, a product I could offer to society and make a living from. This would be my calling. I would succeed. The yield would be so good it would sell through organic shops. People would travel from all four corners of the island to buy orange sweet potatoes.

Months passed, years passed, yields stayed mediocre. Gradually the orange types changed colour and became white. At some point they faded and were taken over by the stronger, more resilient type that is widespread in Mauritius. The purple-skinned, white-fleshed sweet potato, the Japanese or Murasaki type.

Sadly, this dream did not come true 🙁
I kept hoping that, when I unearthed the vines, I would find a miracle. A super yield of 4 kg per m².

In the end I was back to the same yield as before.

Maybe the Grand Baie climate is simply not right for the orange varieties. I do not know for sure. What I know is that I will keep learning, keep testing, and keep sharing what’s working out.

What’s next with the sweet potatoes I currently grow?

I like eating sweet potatoes. I no longer grow them with the idea of selling at a profit. I grow them for my own table and the satisfaction of eating food I grew myself, knowing exactly where it comes from. I will sell some surplus, which you can benefit from when you come for Kombucha or greens.

If I factor in labour time and divide by yield, then add a fair markup, I would have to sell above the average market price. With lettuce I have concluded that Rs 65 and above is the optimal price. Below that it is a loss for me. I cannot reach a similar fair price with sweet potatoes. To cover costs I could be at about 5× the average market price. The work on sweet potatoes also stretches over a longer period, and once you add that in, the fair price ends up far above the market.

We shall see what my other experiments bring. Maybe I will find a formula that works in Grand Baie where I can double to quadruple the yield. At least I am getting a yield!

I have also found that manioc (cassava) grows well here in the garden, and I have already switched the first raised bed to manioc. The yield is better and it is a great food source. I want to grow more foods that I can eat regularly. It has also had fewer insect attacks. Another plus is the way it grows. I am experimenting with growing other vegetables under its leaves that I prune. Right now I am trying bell pepper and aubergine among the manioc, and it struck me that I should also add some greens that can benefit from shade in our strong sun. This is something I cannot do easily with sweet potatoes.

It is an interesting learning journey.

Please share your experience growing sweet potatoes and, in general, what is going on with your garden projects.

Warm greetings from DITO’S GARDEN!