If you want to grow a plant that can take neglect and abuse. That you can set and forget but still get an amazing harvest from, then my friends you need to learn how to grow sweet potatoes.
This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I never tasted the sweet wonderfulness of a sweet potato until a couple years after the birth of my first child. Even when I started growing sweet potatoes, I hardly had a clue what they tasted like or how I would use them in the kitchen.
But they grow well in the heat so I had to give them a chance. We bought some sweet potatoes from the store hoping we could grow our own from that. Well… it must’ve been a pretty dead potato cause it rotted on the counter. Kinda gross, honestly.
Finally while walking through the store months later I passed by a potato that looked fresh enough. It didn’t have any kind of packaging and looked like it had just come out of the ground. We bought two and finally, finally, we had sweet potato slips!
Except, I didn’t realize we could take the slips off and root them separately from the spud. So, I planted the whole thing in the ground! I watered that thing for six weeks at least before it sprouted… I must’ve looked crazy watering a bare patch of ground for so long. 🤪
That slow start turned into a full sprint with that one sweet potato plant (yeah… the other rotted, too) taking over half of my small garden space. After six months we filled a five gallon bucket with sweet potatoes of all shapes and sizes. My kids got a kick out of finding the tubers and pulling them out of the ground.
It took a while but after many months of trial and error I finally figured out how to grow sweet potatoes. Since then I’ve learned a lot about growing these wonderfully productive, heat loving vines.
How to Grow Sweet Potatoes
To grow sweet potatoes you’ll want to start with either a tuber from the store, rooted bare root slips, or rooted slips in soil.
If you are starting with a potato, allow the potato to produce slips as soon in the photo. The slips should be a little larger than the one shown before you remove it. Place the slip is a glass of water, or pot with soil. It doesn’t take long for them to start growing roots.
There’s a wide variety of sweet potatoes from short season to long, so choose accordingly. I’m absolutely in love with my Japanese sweet potatoes.
Find a sunny spot that you can dedicate to the potato, they will take over and they can be persistent when you try to grow something else where they used to be. Water them initially until they are established and then step back and let them do their thing.
Once these suckers are in the ground it’s hard to get them to stop. They require very little in terms of soil quality. I’ve never fertilized mine and every year they produce more and more in less space.
For watering, they are a jungle crop so they will need a decent amount of water. However, if you live in the subtropics it’s likely that mother nature will take care of their watering needs for you.
Again, once these things are established they do not quit. Even during our dry season I only water when they look droopy and that could take weeks.
How to Harvest Sweet Potatoes
For a good harvest of sweet potatoes I recommend giving them at least six months before harvesting. Luckily too, there are signs to look for to determine the readiness of your crop.
If you pull back the leaves and the ground looks bumpy, like a gopher went through and mounded up a bunch of hills, that’s a good sign those tubers have grown nice and big. Another method I use is to walk into the vine itself (don’t worry, these plants are so hardy they really don’t mind being walked on occasionally.) If you feel like you are consistently stepping on something hard, they are ready to harvest.
There are several methods for harvesting sweet potatoes. For our first harvest we rolled up the vine like a big carpet. That worked well enough but I wanted to find a solution that would leave the plant fertilizing the area it had grown in. Think chop and drop. So now, when I harvest I take my weed whacker and cut the section I want to harvest. This covers the earth in leaves that the earth worms seem to really enjoy.
From there it’s time to get on your hands and knees and start rummaging around the ground to find the tubers. Now this is truly the most enjoyable part about growing these plants. It feels like you’re on a treasure hunt that just keeps on giving. Unlike other root crops like carrots or beets where you see the tops swelling out of the ground, a lot of the sweet potatoes are several inches under the soil, so you don’t know they are there until you feel them.
Then you have the fulfillment of pulling up a tuber that’s several pounds in weight. If we are talking in terms of just self sufficiency, sweet potatoes are the MVP’s. The amount of calories they produce in such a small space (the longer they grow in one spot the more tubers they will produce, AKA do not till up your sweet potato patch! Unless it’s part of a feeding regime for your livestock, animal tilling if you will.)
Did you know, the whole vine is edible??? The young tender leaves taste delicious and are incredibly mild. So, while you wait to enjoy the sweet flesh of a homegrown tuber, enjoy the fresh summer greens.
How to Store Sweet Potatoes
Another amazing attribute about sweet potatoes is their shelf life. They will last, even in a warm environment, for months on end. One thing you will want to do after they’re harvested is to let them cure for about a week. This just means letting them scab up any scraps during the harvesting process and consolidate their sugars. Leave them in a dark, warm, humid place and they will be good to go. You could do this in your garage or a shed.
Or, you could skip on the formal act of curing altogether. I simply leave my sweet potatoes on the counter until I am ready to eat them. I should probably get a container for them with decent airflow…. Things to do, things to do.🤔
These sweet potatoes, about 17 lbs., were harvested from a small 4’x2′ patch.
To Store or Not to Store
Recently I read a book called the Small Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery.
Ummmm… Emily, this is a post on sweet potatoes, why are you talking chickens all of a sudden??? Hang on, I promise there is a reason for this.
While reading about Mr. Ussery’s methods it occurred to me for the first time that not everything needs to be harvested right when it becomes harvestable. You can butcher a chicken and have it for dinner that night instead of butchering several chickens all at once for the freezer. Likewise, you can leave the tubers in the ground, where they will remain fresh, until you are ready to eat them.
In this way you can have a never ending supply of sweet potatoes that will never go bad, that you never have to can or find storage space for. That’s kinda cool.
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Unless you live up North. If so, disregard this whole section. 😅
Have you grown sweet potatoes? What are some of your favorite varieties? I’d love to gather some inspiration for future gardening projects from you all!
And if you have any questions, let me know and I’ll do my best to help you out 😊
Happy Gardening!
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