Sweet Potatoes Grown in the Home Garden
by John Yazo
A nutritious and versatile crop of sweet potatoes can be grown in your home garden or as a part of your edible landscape. This warm weather crop has an attractive vine and leaves. Commonly mistaken for a yam, the sweet potato is grown world wide. Yams are a tropical plant, a native to Africa and need tropical climates to survive.
Sweet potatoes are grown from what is called a slip, they can be purchased at local garden centers or you can start your own. To start your own slips, all you need is a sweet potato that is untreated. Some store bought sweet potatoes are coated with a wax to prevent them from sprouting. About six weeks before planting you will need to place it in a box with moist sand, saw dust or mulched leaves and keep at a room temperature of 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the shoots grow to six or eight inches long you can cut them from the tuber and plant.
The ideal planting conditions for growing sweet potatoes is a raised bed garden in a sunny location. Work plenty of compost into the soil to have a loose airy soil structure that retains moisture well. Avoid to much nitrogen, it will cause the plant to produce a thriving vine with lush leaves and small tubers. Sweet potatoes will grow in almost any type of soil, clay soil can cause deformed tubers and sandy soil can produce stringy tubers.
Plant potato slips in the garden about three to four weeks after the last frost, don't plant to early. They are a warm weather crop and will damage easily in cold weather. Make holes six inches deep and about twelve inches apart. Place the slip in the hole and bury them up to the top leaves, firmly press the soil around the plant and water generously. There maturity time is between 90 and 170 days.
Harvesting can start once there leaves start to turn yellow. You can leave then in the ground longer to produce a higher yield, but they need to be completely harvested before the first frost or they can quickly rot.
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