Let's grow some sweet potatoes together this year! 🍠🍠🍠

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I am so mad at myself! - I wanted to start this thread two weeks ago!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Who doesn't like to eat a steaming hot sweet potato with some sugar and cinnamon?!​

Grow them in your own garden, enjoy the beautiful lush green plants during the summer and feast on the roots during the cold season. It is easy and sweet potato plants grow everywhere where you have at least three months of no frost weather.

What are sweet potatoes?
The sweet potato is a tropical plant belonging to the Morning Glory family that vigorously grow long vines with beautiful white and pink flowers. The roots form starch rich tubers with a sweet taste that we know as sweet potato or yam. (Not yams! That is something else!) In its native habitat the plant can become a pesky weed due to its vigorous growth, but in non tropical areas the vines will die during the first frost. More on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato

How to grow sweet potatoes?
If you just buy some sweet potato tubers in the store and bury them in the ground, like you can do with ordinary potatoes, you will be very disappointed: There will be lots and lots of vines, leaves and flowers but sadly almost no tubers in the ground.
New sweet potatoes are being grown from slips that are being created by partially submerging sweet potato tubers in water: You take three matches or something similar and stick them into the sides of the tuber and place it with the bulky side down into a glass of water like this:

This is my collection of sweet potatoes that i hope to use to grow slips. I just bought them at the local grocery store and placed them into the jars. After just one week, the yellow ones have started to grow roots, which is a good sign, so they will start to grow slips very soon:

​

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

How far north will sweet potatoes grow?

 

[Everose]

Wow! We have tried growing them multiple times and have been SUPER disappointed! Just chucking them in a bucket full of dirt produced absolutely nothing!

We will definitely be doing it this way from now on! Thank you!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

How far north will sweet potatoes grow?

I don't know, but i am in West Virginia and last year, when i tried it for the first time, i had an orange bucket full of tubers as a result.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Wow! We have tried growing them multiple times and have been SUPER disappointed! Just chucking them in a bucket full of dirt produced absolutely nothing!

We will definitely be doing it this way from now on! Thank you!

I lived in Houston, Texas for ten years and there i learned how to grow them. It is more common to grow sweet potatoes there than in the northern states. But i have heart from a former colleague that he is growing sweet potatoes in Alaska! (Panhandle, of course) He uses a poly tunnel to start them in late April, early May and has a good harvest in early September.

 

[Chris2018]

How far north will sweet potatoes grow?

I'm in N.E. Ohio and get them to grown here.
If you have a short growing get a variety with a shorter maturing date like Georgia Jet or Beauregard both are right around 90 days.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Sweet potatoes are a tropical plant so they need to be somewhere warm to sprout. Warm air rises so the top of your fridge or a tall bookcase might be the warmest place in your house. I use the top of a bookcase.

I don't use toothpicks or anything like that, I just stick a couple of sweet potatoes in water, leaving a part of the potato standing above the water level. As you can see I also just laid a sweet potato on top of that bookcase on a piece of plastic to keep from ruining the finish. It will still sprout but slower than if in water.

I only want the slips about 8" tall for planting. If they get too long I cut them off and stick them back in the water. Those bits you cut off will root and the bit you leave behind will send out more buds and leaves. If your ground is warm enough you don't even need to root those cuttings. I've cut off a vine and stuck it in the ground. If you keep it moist for a week or so it will grow.

They do make long vines. When I plant them I leave an area 5-1/2 feet clear all round them and am still constantly turning vines around to grow back in that space.

They are easy to grow. Deer love to eat the tops. Voles can chew on some of the tubers. But all in all there are not that many pests that cause problems. They do require a long growing season and warm weather. Most of the sweet potatoes you see at the store are Beauregards. Those are a shorter season variety as Chris mentioned but still take time.

You need to harvest them before a frost. They are a tropical plant. If the vines get frostbitten they die but also the rot spreads to the tubers underground. Those tubers will not store well if that happens. It helps to tear off the vines if a frost is coming and you can't dig them but digging before frost is best.

For fun a shot of some that I grew in storage.

This is another fun one on a drying rack, showing how big some can get.

 

[CHlCKEN]

My sweet potatoes last year were very happy plants. So happy in fact, that they grew out of their designated area and rooted in the bare soil! Those potatoes actually did better anyway though, so I may just do that again this year.

We’ll see

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Sweet potatoes are a tropical plant so they need to be somewhere warm to sprout. Warm air rises so the top of your fridge or a tall bookcase might be the warmest place in your house. I use the top of a bookcase.

View attachment 2561092

I don't use toothpicks or anything like that, I just stick a couple of sweet potatoes in water, leaving a part of the potato standing above the water level. As you can see I also just laid a sweet potato on top of that bookcase on a piece of plastic to keep from ruining the finish. It will still sprout but slower than if in water.

I only want the slips about 8" tall for planting. If they get too long I cut them off and stick them back in the water. Those bits you cut off will root and the bit you leave behind will send out more buds and leaves. If your ground is warm enough you don't even need to root those cuttings. I've cut off a vine and stuck it in the ground. If you keep it moist for a week or so it will grow.
View attachment 2561091

They do make long vines. When I plant them I leave an area 5-1/2 feet clear all round them and am still constantly turning vines around to grow back in that space.

They are easy to grow. Deer love to eat the tops. Voles can chew on some of the tubers. But all in all there are not that many pests that cause problems. They do require a long growing season and warm weather. Most of the sweet potatoes you see at the store are Beauregards. Those are a shorter season variety as Chris mentioned but still take time.

You need to harvest them before a frost. They are a tropical plant. If the vines get frostbitten they die but also the rot spreads to the tubers underground. Those tubers will not store well if that happens. It helps to tear off the vines if a frost is coming and you can't dig them but digging before frost is best.

For fun a shot of some that I grew in storage.

View attachment 2561110

This is another fun one on a drying rack, showing how big some can get.

View attachment 2561112

Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge! I didn't know that they will sprout even without water.
And yes, a lot of animals love to eat the leaves! - Actually you can use young leaves as salad. I had a pretty hard time last year to keep the ducks out of the sweet potato patch, they love the leaves. And then there was that pesky rabbit, not to mention the grasshoppers… - Well those had a really bad day when i dropped my ducklings into the jungle: