Silver Lake Farm Stand yields giant harvest

PERRYVILLE, Mo. (KBSI) – The Silver Lake Farm Stand is cultivating something truly remarkable – giant sweet potatoes that are turning heads, with their enormous, yams, some weighing in at over five pounds!

These giant yams are a sight to behold and a treat for customers.

But what makes this farm stand even more charming is the tiny farmers behind the produce.

The little farmers can be seen carefully holding up the massive tubers.

We talked to Ethan Layton who grew the sweet potato about how the process, he says “It was 136 days that we had them in the ground. These are actually 85 day sweet potatoes is when you were supposed to harvest them so we went and let it over. It doesn’t hurt them or anything when I started digging them the first plant the first one I pulled up was very large and I thought this is weird and so then I continue to dig the rest of we plan a 12 plants and I think we got probably closer to 250 pounds out of 12 plants and sweet potatoes.”

Layton says he was very pleased with the results from their first large garden as they look towards the future.

“We’ve been gardening for three years now this is the first year that we’ve started a larger garden. We’re doing the farmers market and we opened our roadside stand here. You want to hold it there you go.”

When asked his thoughts on what helped the potato grow to its unique size, Layton says natures beauty ran its course.

“I think one of the reasons why they grew so large is I used to have my chicken run in my chicken coop right here for the first couple years that we lived here and we decided to move it to our garden and I think there were so much manure in the ground from the chickens over the years so it causes a soil to be very nutrient rich, and it helped us potatoes grow really well.”

The Silver Lake Farm Stand can be found at the Perryville Farmer’s Market every Saturday from 7-11 a.m.