Not long ago, a customer from Costa Rica asked us about the sweet potato cleaning and grading machine and how to cure some sweet potatoes.
First of all, let's talk about the sorting of sweet potatoes after harvest. If it's just a small area and it's just for the family to eat it, you can pick the size by hand. Different sizes of sweet potatoes can be cooked in different ways. If it is a large farm that can harvest more than a few tons of sweet potatoes per season, mechanized sorting is recommended. The sweet potato grading machine can replace a large number of manual labor to quickly and accurately sort out the size of sweet potatoes, and the specific sorting size can also be set on the sorting machine, which is very convenient.
Now curing, what dose curing do? Well if you harvesting sweet potatoes in the field, you graded them back in the shed or the shop. You have created a lot of wounds and bruises on the those sweet potatoes. By the way, the sweet potato grader is very gentle during the sorting process and does not damage the sweet potato skin. Those bruises and wounds act or serve as a passage for the pathogens to enter and cause disease. And cause rot of your sweet potatoes. Once curing, if you have a rotted sweet potato in that pile that can quickly spread to all the sweet potatoes and create issues, in terms of storability and taste.
Curing, how do we cure sweet potatoes? After grading, we moved the sweet potatoes in a room which is maintained at a very high temperature. When I say very high, we are looking at about 85-90 Fahrenheit. we also need to maintain relative high humidity, which is about 85-90%. Because high temperature and high relative humidity provide the appropriate conditions for the wounds and bruises to heal, and the sweet potatoes to store longer. Another thing to pay attention to is not to stack too high, if it stack too high it would hinder air circulation in there. Sweet potato will cure 7-10days. As a home owner, if you don’t have proper conditions or storage area to cure your sweet potatoes, you can move the harvest sweet potatoes in a green house or in a hoop house, where the temperature are high that outside. That will help to heal the sweet potatoes, but you would better keep then in the green house for 20-25 days.