Sweet potatoes are delicious and easy to grow, not to mention really nutritious. I think many people don’t grow them because they don’t know how. Sweet potatoes are grown from small plants called slips, although I usually refer to them as sweet potato starts. You can order slips from catalogs and sometimes find them at your local garden center, but I would like to encourage you to grow your own. The ones coming from far away often look pretty battered and they were probably started in climates different from your own. I start the sweet potatoes to grow my slips in my coldframe, keeping the cover handy in case the weather dips. I don’t put them in until about the time of the last expected spring frost, which is April 25 around here. That’s when space opens up in my coldframe. I know I’m showing off a little with that picture, but I got 20 slips off that one potato! That variety is Ginseng. I usually figure to get at least about 10 starts off each potato. I also grow Beauregard and the leaves are different. I put the sweet potato halfway into the soil, laying it down as a boat. When the sprouts grow out, you nick them off the potato and don’t worry about there being little or no roots. Plenty of roots will grow off the stems. That gives you a plant with a tiny piece of the potato attached. Put it into the garden bed right up to the leaves.
Sometimes I might nip the plants off when they are much smaller. In that case I would put them in a pot or flat, buried right up to the leaves, allowing them to grow out a little more until going into the garden. You can leave the potato in the ground when you nip off the first slips and more will grow. Sand Hill Preservation Center has some great information about growing sweet potatoes. They are located in Iowa and grow all their slips. If you are worried about getting your sweet potatoes in too late or that your nights are too cool, you will find their information helpful.
I used to be in a hurry to get them in the ground soon after the last frost, but sweet potatoes do best when the soil has had a chance to really warm up and with the rotation I’m working with, I don’t need them until about the first week of June. I usually interplant sweet potatoes with corn, putting them in about two weeks after I’ve transplanted the corn. The corn gets transplanted into a mulch of rye and Austrian winter peas about two weeks after that cover crop has been cut and left in place. The rye/winter pea cover crop is cut with a sickle when it is shedding pollen, which is usually about the first week of May here in Zone 7 in Virginia.
On my website at www.HomeplaceEarth.com, you can see a picture of what the rye looks like when it’s shedding pollen. In my DVD, Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden, I talk about that system and you see me digging the sweet potatoes at harvest. I usually harvest them around the first week of October to make sure to get them out of the ground before the frost. This picture of sweet potatoes interplanted with popcorn can be seen in my garden in my DVD, Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan. The companion CD with that DVD has a copy of the rotation plan for the seven beds in that garden. The sweet potatoes grow out and become a living mulch for the corn. There are other ways of starting sweet potatoes, but this is how I do it. I hope you give sweet potatoes a try in your garden.
Coming up on Saturday, May 7, I’ll be in Kidron, Ohio at Lehman’s Hardware for their Spring Open House. Look for me in the Garden Room from 10am-3pm meeting people and answering gardening questions. If you live close, come on by. If you live far away, it may be time for a road trip if you’ve always wanted to visit Lehman’s. Be sure to introduce yourself and tell me about your garden.
I just happened to buy some sweet potato slips today at Home Depot-Beauregards. I have never grown sweet potatoes before. If I have room, I will try growing my own slips, too. I have some organic sweet potatoes–can I use those to grow my slips? I’ll give one a try.
Yes, you can use those sweet potatoes to grow your own slips. You have a great opportunity to compare the store bought vs homegrown slips and the different planting times. Go for it!
WOW! Shamefully, I never thought of growing sweet potatoes. But I love how you can get many slips from one tuber.
I recently read that some grow sweet potatoes for the LEAVES. Anyone ever eaten or cooked with them?
Hi Cindy – I just planted the first of my sweet potato slips on our “little farm” yesterday! Here’s a link to the photos if you’re interested- both of my starters, newly planted and some overall shots of the garden in general. http://gallery.me.com/semoulds/100152
We’d love to have you and Walt over sometime soon to see how we’re progressing.
Stacey, thanks for posting the photos of your place. Walt and I would love to catch up with you soon. He has been interested in that water tower you have since we saw it last fall. For those of you who don’t know, Stacey and her husband have been building a permaculture city farm in Richmond, VA. She is working from the permaculture plan she made as a class project last spring. Having heard her ideas from the beginning of the plan and seeing the property, such as it was to start with, I’ve really enjoyed watching the progress. Those sweet potatoes look great!
Thank you for the info. I love to stir fry the slips, they are yummy and nutritious, too.
I never thought about eating the slips. If I have extra next year maybe I’ll try that. Thanks for the tip.
Doggone!!!
I wish I had been looking to plant sweet potatoes (which my mom LOVES and I’m allergic to!) two years ago!!!
My MIL lives down right near Lehman’s…I could have come asked any questions in person!!! LOL
Thanks for making this look so simple & wish me luck!
Now, if I can just get a stupid carrot to grow…..I usually end up with these 1 inch stubby things, no matter what I do!!! Oh, well…I’ll give it another go anyway!!! 😉
If you frequent that part of the country, maybe you’d be interested in the Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania at Seven Springs in September. I’ll be speaking there on Grow a Sustainable Diet and on Solar Food Drying. The rest of the time during the MEN Fair I’ll be in the Homeplace Earth booth.
Cindy
so i can take one of my sweet potatoes lay it on the ground (half way covered with dirt), wait until slips grow, then cut off the slips with a little of the sweet potato still attached, and plant the slips?
sounds like one of those experiments that i would like….
peace
Carolyn
Carolyn, that’s right. I put my sweet potatoes in the coldframe or a pot to start them.
[…] It is time to have the tomatoes out of the coldframe, so what’s next? I mentioned that the sweet potatoes went in after the tomatoes. I often don’t plant the sweet potato slips in the garden until about June 7. I’m always anxious, wondering if they will come up in the coldframe or if I should have started the sweet potatoes in jars of water in the house. Then the slips appear and take off. So, if you are anxious, also, have faith. When the weather is right, they will grow. Sweet potatoes like to be warm, so I keep the coldframe lids handy for longer than might be necessary. Learn more about growing your own sweet potato slips at https://homeplaceearth.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/grow-your-own-sweet-potato-slips/ […]
Hi Cindy. I am very interested in trying the interplanting but have read that sweet potatoes need a lot of light. Would you mind elaborating on how you do the spacing? It looks in your photo as if the plants are fairly close together. Thanks a lot!
Susan, I interplant sweet potatoes and corn, planting the sweet potatoes about a foot apart in the space not taken up by the corn. The Bloody Butcher corn that I grow for cornmeal is planted in circles down the middle of a 4’wide bed. I plant 5 or 6 corn plants in an 18″ circle, with the center of each circle 4′ from the center of the next circle. I do it this way so that when summer storms come through, my corn won’t blow over. The wind can go between the circles. That also lets the sun in, so shading is not a problem for the sweet potatoes.
Thanks so much. I am planting white gourdseed corn. I believe that it has about the same planting space needs as bloody butcher. I am excited to try it!
Hi Cindy Thanks for posting a picture of the Ginseng potato plant .Do you have any idea where to buy some.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange carries them in their catalog.
[…] researching, to make sure I had all of my information together, I ran across a blog post in which this lady grows her slips right in the ground. Then, I was looking in Rodale’s All […]