Man Thet | มันเทศ | Ipomoea batatas
Family: Convolvulaceae | Genus: Ipomoea
Sweet potatoes are grown in the small garden on your left hand side when you enter the premises of the Thai Child Development Foundation and Eco-Logic Thailand.
The Sweet Potato plant is a herbaceous perennial vine, belonging to the morning glory family. It bears alternate heart-shaped or palmately lobed leaves and medium-sized flowers. The stems are usually crawling on the ground and form roots at the nodes.
Depending on the variety, the total length of a stem can be between 0.5 and 4 meter.
Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots are eaten as a vegetable. The young leaves and shoots are sometimes eaten as greens. The sweet potato, is not related to the common potato or to the yam.
The tubers of the sweet potato can be range in color between yellow, orange, red, brown, purple, and beige.
It takes 3 to 4 months to harvest the tubers after planting the sweet potato. Harvest is in the dry season.
THE VINE
The Sweet Potato plant is a herbaceous perennial vine, belonging to the morning glory family. It bears alternate heart-shaped or palmately lobed leaves and medium-sized flowers. The stems are usually crawling on the ground and form roots at the nodes.
Depending on the variety, the total length of a stem can be between 0.5 and 4 meter.
THE LEAVES
The leaves of the sweet potato are screwed along the stems. The leaf stalk is 5 to 20 inches long. The leaf blades are very variable, 5 to 13 centimeters long, the shape is heart-, kidney- to egg-shaped, rounded or triangular and spear-shaped, the edge can be entire, toothed or often three to seven times lobed, cut or divided. Most of the leaf surfaces are bare, rarely hairy, the tip is rounded to pointed.
The leaves are mostly green in color, but along the leaf veins, they can be purple in color.
THE FLOWERS
The hermaphrodite, five-fold and short-stalked flowers of the sweet potato, arise from the leaf axils and stand upright. Sweet potatoes rarely flower when the daylight is longer than 11 hours. The small sepals are elongated and tapering to a point and spiky and 10 to 15 mm long, usually finely haired . The inner three are a little longer. The 4 to 7 cm long, overgrown and funnel-shaped, folded crown, with a shorter hem, can be lavender to purple-lavender in color, the throat is usually darker in color, but white crowns can also appear. The flowers open before sunrise and stay open for a few hours. They close again in the morning and begin to wither.
THE TUBER
The edible tuberous root of the sweet potato is long and tapered, with a smooth skin whose color ranges between yellow, orange, red, brown, purple, and beige.
Its flesh ranges from beige through white, red, pink, violet, yellow, orange, and purple.
Sweet potato with white or pale yellow flesh are less sweet and moist than those with red, pink or orange flesh.
CULINARY USES
Man thet (literally meaning "foreign tuber") is popularly also known as man daeng ( มันแดง; "red tuber"); boiled pieces are eaten as a snack or used as an ingredient for desserts.
Click on the link of the Food Forest Kitchen to find some of the recipes of our restaurant that include sweet potato.
NUTRITION
Besides simple starches, raw sweet potatoes are rich in complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber and beta-carotene, with moderate contents of other micronutrients, including vitamin B5, vitamin B6 and manganese.
Sweet potato with dark orange flesh have more beta-carotene than those with light-colored flesh.
TRADITIONAL MEDICINAL USE
NOTE: please take advice from a doctor if you are planning to use herbal medicine.
Sweet potato has various amounts of nutrients, vitamins and minerals which provides enormous health benefits. It also helps to maintain the veins and arteries health and also prevents hardening. It possess high amount of phosphorus and beta-carotene which is essential for the cardiac and ocular health.
Consuming sweet potato is said to have to following benefits:
Enhance immunity
Reduce inflammation
Cures asthma
Treats bronchitis
Manage arthritis
Healthy digestion
Treats cancer
Treats ulcers on stomach
Treats diabetes
Balance water
Gain weight
INTO THE WILD: a down to earth experience
For guests and visitors to Paksong we organize weekly tours "The Edible Forest" and Foraging weekends: Into the Wild. We work with local guides to take you in the jungle of Paksong. After foraging, we will cook a meal with the ingredients, using bamboo together with you!
Come and join and learn about the abundance of food that nature gives us!
INTO THE WILD!
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