A Sweet Mission
Winnipeg sweet potato is on a mission to demystify the growing of this amazing warm weather vegetable in our Northern climate.
Producing quality slips and providing hands on region specific advice,I aim to empower local growers to try their luck with cultivating this super food.
My personal goal is to provide better sustainability within our homes, province and country. I hope to see more local sweet potatoes on more Manitoba plates.
By providing healthy local plants along with helpful tips,we look forward to seeing a Manitoba sweet potato boom in coming years. Winnipeg Sweet Potato aspires to meet the demand of this growing market.
Sweet potatoes are here to stay in Canadian gardens and we want to make it easier for more people enjoy all that this plant can offer.
Thanks for your support and we are thrilled to "GROW" and meet the needs of home gardeners and farmers alike.
About Winnipeg Sweet Potato
Gardening in Manitoba for 25 years has driven my pioneering spirit and fueled my curiosity to try the unexpected. Being home to raise my young children has allowed me the privilege to devote attention and cultivate the riches provided by the garden. My desire to improve variety & diet, along with my need to increase our sustainability, led me to experiment with sweet potatoes.
Since 2012, I have been enjoying the pleasing results of tending this determined root vegetable right within the city of Winnipeg. Since then I have focused on small scale urban farming as a a proud founding member of South Osborne Permaculture workers co-op. Our low impact fresh produce is eaten within 10 km of where it once grew. We increase availability as well as food security and sweet potatoes are now touted as one of our prized specialty crops. By raising sweet potatoes on a larger scale I am able to share my "hands on" territory specific experience with this normally Southern grown vegetable.
A few years ago, I created www.facebook.com/winnipegsweetpotato, to connect with local growers and share what I have learned. Soon it became clear to me that I was not the only gardener interested in making this delightful super-food part of my annual harvest. Almost everyone loves a good sweet potato!
My slips were gifted to eager fellow gardeners in 2014. To my surprise, surplus plants were quickly snapped up and the feedback was great. People loved them and also reported impressive results. After my sweets were planted safely in the ground, I dug into my career as an urban farmer and began selling my specialty produce to high-end local restaurants. Word caught on and the majority of my unique prairie sweet potato crop ended up being purchased and highlighted by creative local chefs. Manitoba was clearly intrigued by this sweet new offering being made less intimidating and more accessible.
In the spring of 2015 my homegrown slips were sold to one of my favorite local garden markets (Jardins St. Leon)as well as to some small scale farmers. I personally planted out over 1000 slips for commercial production and all of those were in turn sold to five different restaurants. Positive feedback along with booming interest has allowed Winnipeg Sweet potato to sprout into a sustainable enterprise with a very small carbon footprint.
2016 will see Winnipeg Sweet Potato blossom by providing unparalleled quality with an unmatched personal touch.
Sincerely,
Tiffany Grenkow
