Not only are sweet potatoes packed with calcium, potassium, vitamin A and vitamin C; they are also delicious! If you haven’t grown sweet potatoes before, I encourage you to add them to your garden this year. They really aren’t hard to grow.
Most sweet potatoes are grown from “slips.” I saved back three sweet potatoes from last year just so we could grow our own sweet potato slips. Slips can also be purchased from local nurseries or through these Amazon Links:
Beauregard Sweet Potato Slips / Organic
Centennial Sweet Potato Slips – Organic
Georgia Jet Sweet Potato Slips – Organic
How to Grow Your Own Sweet Potato Slips
How to Grow Your Own Sweet Potato SlipsI select sweet potatoes from the year before that are still in good shape and place them bottom end down in a jar or glass of water. When you select your potato you might be able to see some initial shoots like this:
Sweet potato buds
Even if you don’t see any shoots, your potato should still develop buds once placed in water, unless you are using purchased sweet potatoes that have been treated to prevent sprouting. One sweet potato will produce several slips.
The buds will develop into larger slips.
I remove the slips from the potato after they are about 5″-6″ in length. I just break them off from the potato and put them in a separate glass/jar of water. Soon these new shoots will develop roots.
Sweet potatoes are warm weather plants so be patient when it comes to planting them outside. They cannot handle cold weather at all.
When planting sweet potato slips I dig a hole deep enough for the roots to go in without being crowded. I plant each slip about 12″ apart in our deepest (12″) garden beds. The beautiful vines will soon be overflowing the box.
One great thing about sweet potatoes is that the vines will become thick enough to shade out late season weeds. As long as you keep the weeds pulled early on, you will have a beautiful weed free sweet potato bed to enjoy until fall harvest.
Happy Sweet Potato Growing!
Jennifer
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Sweet potatoes were on my list for this year, but I missed the window. They will have to be planted for next year. I’m excited to try them, because, we love them. Thanks, for the great information!