Sweet potato
is a lovely, healthy treat, especially around the holidays. Although sweet potato is relatively inexpensive to buy, cultivating your own is not only cheaper, but more gratifying. Planting your sweet potato crop at the right time of year will contribute to a healthier, fuller yield at harvest time.
THE SLIP
Sweet potatoes are generally planted from slips, or rooted pieces of tuber. To create a slip, cut up a sweet potato length-wise and put the potato in a mound of moist potting soil (be sure to have a few inches of soil above and below the potato). Within 6 weeks, small roots should develop, and leaves should sprout. When the leaves are about 8 inches tall, it is safe to plant the potato . It is not recommended to use potatoes from the grocery store, as they could have diseased roots, instead get them from a certified dealer with certified disease-free roots.
PLANTING
Sweet potatoes thrive in warm weather, so plant the potato as soon as the ground warms after the last frost of the year to give the potato as much time to grow in the warm weather as possible. Plant the slips in mounds about 8 inches high; this technique makes the soil warmer and helps drain water from around the slips more quickly, preventing water-logging. Make sure when you plant the potatoes to plant the rows of mounds 12-18 inches apart, to make room for the vines that will grow along the ground as the potato plans mature.
VARIETIES TO PLANT
Here are a few recommended varieties of sweet potato by the University of Illinois:
Bush Porto Rico takes 110 days to mature and is high-yielding
Vardaman also takes 110 days to mature
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