My hometown is Hai'an, Nantong. People here like to grow sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are my favorite delicacy.
On Qingming Festival, grandma planted the prepared sweet potatoes in the ground, and within a few days the sweet potatoes sprouted young leaves. They bathed in the spring light and grew up quickly in the warm wind. People are busy planting sweet potato seedlings around the Dragon Boat Festival. Grandma cut off the thick sweet potato seedlings and inserted them into the loose soil one by one along with the base fertilizer. The vitality of the potato seedlings is very strong. It sucked up the rainwater and immediately took root and sprouted in the new soil. After a while, grandma will fertilize them.
When the cicadas began to cry joyfully, the short potato vines had grown into long potato vines, and they were intertwined and crawling all over the ground. The sweet potato leaves all over the ground were shining brightly in the sunlight.
After the Mid-Autumn Festival, it is the sweet potato harvest season. Grandma first cut the potato vines and then dug out the sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes all over the ground are like chubby children. After playing enough, they lie on the ground and fall asleep. They look so cute. Ripe sweet potatoes taste fragrant and sweet, making people want to eat them more and more. White-skinned sweet potatoes have a bland taste, yellow-skinned sweet potatoes are sweet, and purple-skinned sweet potatoes are fragrant. They have different colors and different tastes. I like to eat yellow sweet potatoes the most. After peeling the skin and looking at the yellow and orange flesh, you can't tell whether you are getting an egg yolk or a sweet potato. Only after you take a bite, you know that the sweet potato is more delicious than the egg yolk. Sometimes when my grandma is cooking, I take a sweet potato and bake it in the earthen stove with wood. The smell makes my mouth water. Grandma said that she stored the sweet potatoes that could not be eaten, and they would become very sweet after a while. During the off-season, the folks cut the sweet potatoes into slices or shreds and dried them in the sun. The sweet potatoes tasted sweeter than chewing gum in their mouths.
I love my hometown of Hai'an, and I love the sweet potatoes in my hometown.