How To Grow Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are actually the 6th most prolific crop grown in the World today with 90% being grown in Asia. Simply put they are to my mind the best tasting root vegetable going! I love growing sweet potatoes, and especially then eating them roasted!

Growing sweet potatoes is a relatively simple process. There are two ways in which you can grow them, the first and the most easiest is to look online and buy some sweet potato “Slip” that are the equivalent of a normal “Chitted” potato. Commonly these seem to come in a kit of six, just note that when you buy them on the Internet, and they are shipped mail order then you need to plant them immediately they arrive.

The other alternative is to grow your own sweet potato “Slips”, and you can do this very simply by buying just one sweet potato and placing in upright in a glass of water (Ensure it is an uncooked potato!). Within approximately one month then it will have begun to have lots of shoots/slips growing out of it. Ensure it is kept well watered.

Now simply cut the slips off when they are about 6-8 inches long, and place each one in water, and within around one week, each slip should have developed its own root system, once it has you sweet potato slip is ready for planting out directly into your garden.

You can plant them directly in to the soil, however as they are used to growing in very dry climates then mixing a small amount of sand in with the soil can actually help when planting them out. Water regularly but not too much, as they prefer to be drier than normal potatoes.

Place slug pellets around the green shoots of the slips, as just like normal potatoes slugs just love to eat the leaves.

The same technique applies when planting shop bought sweet potato “Slips”, just plant the sweet potatostraight in to the ground with a little bit of sand mixed in with the soil. Of note is that they do not like over watering, unlike normal potatoes that like a lot of water sweet potatoes do not. Also their growth will be slowed if they are consistently below 50 deg Fahrenheit in temperature for any length of time.

In general your sweet potatoes should be ready in around three months, or four if the ambient temperature is cool. They really are that easy to grow which is why sweet potatoes are in such widespread use, as they are also very drought resistant, however if you have problems then read up on Sweet Potato Pests And Diseases

Or you may like to find out How to Grow Yams instead.

By Richard Allen -