Sweet potato and its cultivation

- has many Chinese names and it contains starch and vitamins
- a fair amount of sweet potato (satsumaimo) flavoured by Singaporeans flourish in Kagoshima, Japan
- different kinds of sweet potato can be found in supermarkets, aka Japanese sweet potatoes in Singapore
- either red and long or ordinary-looking, and extremely fragile

- soil used to cultivate them is utterly soft and loose, and shaped like a tunnel to prevent the sweet potatoes from getting damaged during harvest
- harvest takes place after 3mth or 120 days
- saplings grow to about the size of 6" and snip of the part of the leaves and stem, and insert it at a slanted angle into the soil
- in this way, it'll produce more sweet potatoes as more can grow underground at a slanted angle (produce about 3 in a bunch)
- an upright sapling may produce only 1 sweet potato
- Japanese sweet potatoes that are long with red skin and yellow flesh in Singapore are planted similarly

- the climate, loose and fertile soil and the saplings determine the amount and quality of sweet potatoes produced
- farmers must be sharply attuned to climate change during sweet potato cultivation
- soil cannot be too dry during summer, and water quality must also be monitored
- pest control and pruning of stems are also necessary
- constant loving care enables the sweet potatoes to grow healthily


- when the weather turns chilly farmers use hay to protect the sweet potatoes from the cold and adopt night irrigation and day water drainage to counteract the frosty weather
- farmers carry out the work in 0 deg Celcius climate
- what some people consider cheap sweet potatoes are the fruits of many people's labour
- farming is such an arduous task (the whole process consumes massive manpower, and the harvesting vehicle may seem easy to drive as it's slow-moving, but in fact difficult to manoeuvre)
- the soil is extremely loose, and have to move cautiously and slowly to form a straight line
- farmers are very protective of their sweet potatoes, and anyone will be inexplicably touched if he/she observed how hard the farmers work

- can be fermented into shochu, and the selection of sweet potatoes for brewing shochu is no mean feat
- damaged portions must be sliced off and overly large sweet potatoes must be cut into smaller pieces
- steamed at high temperature before fermentation to prevent the starch from disintegrating
- a large steamer can hold hundreds of kilo of sweet potatoes
- in traditional Japanese shochu fermentation, water and yeast are added before sweet potatoes and sugar (everything is stirred manually)
- produced by means of distillation
- first sip tastes abit spicy and it leaves a light and sweet aftertaste at the tip of the tongue

- are held in high esteem in Kagoshima
- its products can also be found in shops eg. Festivalo
- unlike the sweet potatoes desserts found in Singapore (oneh oneh, fried sweet potato, sweet potato cakes, sweet potato soup), there's a wide variety sold there eg. morsel (soft and flurry and tastes like soy bean cake)
- others like chiffon cake (made from sweet potato leaves), sweet potato juice (made with sweet potato, milk, honey), sweet potato ice-cream etc