How To Grow Sweet Potatoes

They’re truly gorgeous plants, don’t you think?  I’m so happy we tried growing them!  And it’s incredibly easy.

1.  Buy Slips or Grow Them At Home:

• We bought “Carolina Ruby” Sweet Potato slips from Irish Eyes.
• You can also grow slips yourself using organic sweet potatoes.

2.  Plant The Slips.

The slips are basically mini plants.  Plant them after the last frost, in rich soil with some well-aged compost, 12-18″ apart (we planted them far closer, but some of our potatoes were pretty small).

3.  Do Virtually Nothing.

Water regularly, but otherwise they need almost zero weeding, and we didn’t have any bugs or disease.  You can stop watering them during the last 3 weeks before harvest, so the roots are dry when you pull them out, and so that they don’t develop any molds.

To those of us in the northwest US, note that they are related to morning glories, so we can be assured they’ll grow very well!

4.  Pull Them Up!

They’re basically on the same schedule as Irish potatoes:  when they start to yellow in the fall, it’s about time to pull them. You can also feel them beneath the soil and get a sense of how big they are.

Seriously, that’s it.  No excuses now – if you like them, grow them!