Let's call this a learning experience

So. I was planning on harvesting the sweet potatoes a few weeks ago and was reviewing some websites about what exactly I was supposed to do. While reading through the troubleshooting section I noticed what seemed like an odd warning: if you give the sweet potato plants too much water, the sweet potatoes will be long and stringy. One website discouraged "luxurious growing conditions", which, I guess, includes daily watering.

So what does it mean that the sweet potatoes will be long and stringy? Well, here's an example:


I realize that there's nothing there to judge scale, but each of these sweet potatoes is about the length of a finger. And these are the large sweet potatoes. I found several roots that were the color of a sweet potato but otherwise looked just like a root -- no thickness at all.

So what's a girl to do? I decided to stop digging around in the dirt and let them grow a bit longer. I have potatoes growing in two containers and I only dug up one of them. I have no idea whether the other potatoes will continue to grow, but I can wait a few more weeks before I have to harvest them. Don't worry, I'll let you know.