Growing and Using Sweet Potatoes

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Sweet potatoes are incredibly healthy and are very easy to grow in the home vegetable garden. The plant is pretty and I’ve seen people grow sweet potatoes as low border in flower beds around their home as part of their edible landscaping.

The first time I grew sweet potatoes, friend bought some slips from the feed store and gave them to me. I later found out that they were $9…ouch. Unlike other vegetables, sweet potatoes are grown by slips not seeds.

Sweet potato slips are simply the sprouts that grow on the ends of a very mature sweet potato. If you wan to try your hand at growing your own slips, I highly recommend it. There are several ways to grow sweet potato slips and pros and cons of each way.

The first year we harvested, we didn’t do a very good job of digging them up, the soil where they were planted had a lot of clay and it was compacted down. The next spring when we tilled in some sand and compost into the area, the leftover sweet potatoes went flying!

In a few weeks we had a lot of sweet potato sprouts coming up in that area. Sweet potatoes are pretty hardy and as long as your ground doesn’t freeze you can expect any leftover sweet potato tubers to sprout the next year. I wouldn’t intentionally leave them in the ground, just be mindful to double check the area in the spring before you plant that area with something else.

SchneiderPeeps - Growing Sweet Potatoes are really easy if you have at least 100 frost free days.

How to plant sweet potatoes

  • Sweet potatoes love heat. So for our zone they are some of the last things we plant. Planting season  is April 15-May 15th
  • Sweet potatoes need at least 100 frost free days (northern climates can cover the ground with clear plastic to help warm up the soil)
  • Sweet potatoes are not the same as yams and they’re different than regular potatoes, sweet potatoes are actually related to the morning glory
  • Plant sweet potatoes in loose, well drained soil (not clay like we did the first year, or you’ll have trouble harvesting them)
  • Once established you only need to water if you notice the vine wilting
  • Plant slips 12-18″ apart and to a depth of about half its length
  • If you live in a warm climate that doesn’t freeze (zones 10-11) you might be able to grow them year round. As the vine grows you can bury it every 12″ or so and it will re-root and begin a new tuber.

If you need help figuring out how much to plant to feed your family, you can have some printable worksheets emailed to you by filling out the form below.

Pest and problems with growing sweet potatoes

  • Wireworms and grubs can be a problem for any root crop
  • We had a problem with pill bugs eating the potatoes. We’re using diatomaceous earth to help.
  • Nematodes may be a problem and you can add beneficial nematodes if you have poorly colored or deformed potatoes
  • Sweet potatoes have very few pest and problems. In fact, Teri from Homestead Honey likes to grow sweet potatoes for a winter storage crop instead of winter squash for this very reason.
harvesting sweet potatoes

Harvesting and Storing Sweet Potatoes

  • Unlike regular potatoes, sweet potatoes vines won’t die back when they’re ready to be harvested. They will die when the first frost hits.
  • Anytime between 100-120 days your potatoes will be ready. When you’re ready to harvest, just pull up the vines and use a digging fork to dig them up. Kids love this job!
  • Harvest before first frost (although some of ours have gone through our mild winter in the ground just fine)
  • Sweet potatoes need to be cured before storage. They need to held at 85-90°F and 80-90% humidity for 5-7 days. This will help them not dry out.
  • To store they need to be kept at 55°F or higher. They’ll begin to rot if its lower.
partial sweet potato harvest

Using Sweet Potatoes

Unlike regular potatoes, sweet potato leaves are edible (regular potato leaves are toxic so don’t eat those!) and very tasty. I like to saute them with carrots and onions just like I do broccoli and cauliflower leaves. Using the secondary harvest of the leaves helps us eat well between the seasons.

We also like to mash them or bake them just like regular potatoes. We only add butter, salt and pepper – no sweetener to them. Another favorite way to enjoy sweet potatoes is in sweet potato pie.

We’re pretty “plain Jane” eaters in our home but if you like to experiment with sweet potatoes here’s a list of 50 different recipes!

You can find information about other fruits and veggies by searching clicking on the In The Garden tab up top or in The Gardening Notebook. Any other tips? Feel free to share in the comments.

image of just harvested sweet potatoes on the bare ground.

Thanks for sharing with your friends!

24 thoughts on “Growing and Using Sweet Potatoes”

  1. So, how exactly do you cure sweet potatoes?

    I am interested to know how you use Diatomaceous Earth for your pest issue.

    I am getting frustrated with the garden weeds and grass. I know it will be hard this year because it is the first year we have gardened, but it’s just maddening to look out and see the grass pop up again and weeds littering the beds.

    Reply
    • To cure the sweet potatoes you need to keep them at 85-90 degrees and 80-90% humidity for 5-7 days. For us, I can just find a shaded place outside to do that when we dig them up in the fall – we live in a hot humid place. I’ve heard of some using their second bathroom with a heater and humidifier.

      Diatomaceous Earth can be used for several pests including pill bugs, slugs, etc. Pretty much anything that crawls. We have to be careful of what we use and where we put it because of the bees. It would be bad to have lots of green beans and in the process kill Gabriel’s bees. We just sprinkle the DE around the base of the plants and on the ground. I’m not putting it on the leaves although you could if you aren’t so worried about the bees. There’s 2 kinds of DE – you want to use the food/garden kind not the kind that is used for swimming pools.

      I know the first year is hard. I wouldn’t worry too much about the grass and weeds. Just pull them when you can. As your plants grow, they’ll shade some of the beds and the weeds won’t grow as well. Of course, you don’t want a weed jungle but even the most diligent gardeners have weeds in their beds unless they’re using commercial sprays.

      Reply
    • @Angi Schneider,
      I found that laying pieces of cardboard
      across your garden will kill the grass and weeds. I pulled my weeds for 4 years until I became very frustrated with the amount of work that it was. This summer, I just laid out the cardboard, and viola… no weeds. Kills them dead!

      Reply
  2. Great post. I tried to grow them here in Oregon in a black grow bag and didn’t have very much luck. Glad to see that your are doing so well and that you were able to share so many starts.

    Reply
  3. Hi Angi, we grew sweet potatoes last year for the first time, as well. They did very well much to our surprise (Zone 5B). They also hold really well in our cellar over the winter. We are planting them again this year and my question is, do you have any recipes you’ve found work really well with them? They aren’t sweet enough to work in yam recipes and I find that some of my regular potato recipes make them too creamy and caramelized (and dark colored) since they are sweeter than white.

    Reply
    • That’s so cool you have a root cellar! We live too close to the coast to have one.

      As far as recipes, my families favorite is sweet potato pie. We also like them just mashed with some butter, salt and pepper and maybe a little maple syrup and bacon bits. I’ve also roasted them in the oven by cutting them up in cubes along with beets and onions and drizzling them with olive oil and just a small amount of maple syrup. You can also just bake them like regular white baked potatoes or make oven fries with them (I haven’t done either of those but I have a friend who has). Hope that helps.

      Reply
  4. Great information. We are growing regular potatoes, but not sweet potatoes. None of my bunch like them. Potatoes are one of those things that you’ll regularly find “volunteers”. I like that. LOL

    Thanks for sharing!

    Please join us again Thursday at:
    The HomeAcre Hop

    ~Ann

    Reply
  5. There is no winter in my country. It is summer all year long. Will the plant grow more sweet potatoes if I leave the leaves after digging out the sweet potatoes?

    Reply
  6. I’ve never had success with regular potatoes since we moved to Texas (they just rot) so this year I grew white sweet potatoes. I’m about to harvest them, but is there anything I should do before harvesting? Let them dry out like onions? Harvest on a humid day? Anything?

    Reply
    • How fun! Yes, they need to be cured for 10 days at 80-85°F and high relative humidity or they can be cured between 65-75°F for 2-3 weeks. I lay mine out on an outside table out of direct sunlight for 2-3 weeks since I don’t have place that I can control the temperature.

      Reply
  7. first time to plant I used grow bag four section one. I had lovely leaves growing everywhere but when pulled at time I had figured all I got were plenty of roots no taters at all

    Reply
    • I’ve never grown sweet potatoes in grow bag, so I can’t really say what happened. It takes about 120 days for sweet potato tubers to swell so maybe they didn’t have enough time?

      Reply
  8. I live in southwest FL, probably zone 10. How many hours of sun can sweet potatoes handle in our hot and humid zone?
    Great info for novice growers . Thank you.

    Reply
    • I live along the Texas Gulf coast (zone 9 but zones only tell you how cold a climate gets, not how hot) and ours are planted in full sun with no shade available. They thrive all through the summer. If you give them a little shade it would be fine but sweet potatoes can take hot, humid conditions day after day just fine.

      Reply
  9. Angi, I’m in LA, so same climate as you. Where exactly do you store your potatoes after they’re cured, and for how long? I can store them in my pantry inside paper bags for a long time. Thanks!!

    Reply

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