Plant Slips on Raised Beds for big Potatoes
To grow sweet potatoes, start with “slips,” which are tiny plants sprouted from sweet potatoes. Here’s how I grow the slips I need each spring.
About 7 to 8 weeks before the average last frost date I get some sweet potatoes from the market. I cut them in half lengthwise and lay the pieces cut-side-down in aluminum cake plates filled with moist peat moss. I put a shallow covering of moist peat moss over the potato pieces and wrap the works in a plastic bag.
As soon as the slips appear, I take off the plastic and put the plants in a sunny window. After our last frost date, I pull each slip and plant it separately. It will grow to a full-sized sweet potato plant.
You can also get slips by sprouting a section of sweet potato in a jar of water. Like sprouting an avocado pit, most of each piece should be submerged in water on the kitchen windowsill.
In warm climates, start slips from sweet potatoes planted in cold frames or in soil at the edge of the garden. In case of a very cold night, make sure they’re covered up.
You can also send away for sweet potato slips. Specify the date you want to receive them— when your soil has warmed up and the danger of frost is about past. (Northern gardeners: try the Centennial variety first. It does best in cooler summers.)
I plant the slips in raised beds, about 6 to 8 inches high. Raising the soil in beds, or “ridges,” is especially important with clay soil. Heavy soils compact and restrict the growth of the roots underground, resulting in rough and odd-shaped potatoes. These soils also tend to drain poorly. Don’t prepare your beds more than a day before planting, or weeds will start growing before your sweet potatoes.
How to Fertilize Sweet Potatoes
Fertilizing is a delicate matter with sweet potatoes, as too much plant food, especially nitrogen, will produce skinny potatoes and lush vines. Yet too little fertilizer cuts down on the harvest.
When using commercial fertilizer, the basic guideline is about 4 or 5 pounds of 5-10-10 for each 100 feet of row. The simplest way to apply the fertilizer is to broadcast over the lanes where you’ll be making your ridges.
Set the slips 12 to 15 inches apart in the row, and about 5 to 6 inches deep. Make a little hole for them. Set them in and gently water after firming the soil around them. If you have some short slips, put them into the soil with one leaf showing above ground; they’ll do fine.
Watering is very important in the next few days. Keep the soil around the slips wet, so the roots can expand quickly. Once the roots have anchored the plants, sweet potatoes can be considered drought-hardy.
After the plants take hold but before their vines really start to run along the ground, you should give them more fertilizer as a side-dressing. Try a tablespoon of 5-10-10 for each plant. Bone meal, high in phosphorus, is also good side-dressing fertilizer. Apply 1 cup for each 10 feet of row.
Harvest Sweet Potatoes before Frost
Sweet potato plants will grow as long as the weather stays warm. Their vines don’t die and signal the harvest as white potatoes do. Most gardeners wait until their sweet potatoes are pretty large, then harvest all of them. For super eating earlier in the season, harvest sweet potatoes when they’re not much bigger than your finger. Reach in the hill and steal them from the plant.
A fall frost can hurt sweet potatoes even though they’re underground, so harvest them before cold weather. When frost kills and blackens the vines above the ground, decay to the roots.
Dig the sweet potatoes on a dry day. Dig gently around the hills, starting from a few feet away; you don’t want to slash any wandering potatoes with your shovel or fork.
Dry the potatoes on the ground for an hour. If you dig late in the day, don’t leave them out overnight. Never wash the potatoes after the harvest, either.
Select any badly cut or bruised potatoes to eat first; they won’t keep well. Sort the rest according to size in boxes or baskets to cure before storage.
Curing, which is important for sweet potatoes, takes 10 to 14 days. Keep them in a warm, dark place with some ventilation. The temperature should be around 70° to 80° F. with high humidity.
Sweet potatoes bruise easily and suffer in storage when handled roughly. The less you handle the crop, the better.
Sweet potatoes will spoil in a short time in cool storage. Jan and I cook our sweet potatoes right at harvest time—in 11/2-inch chunks with no seasonings—and pop them in the freezer.
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Grow your own Sweet Potatoes, Planting, Fertilizing and Harvesting
- 25 Planting Hints continue...
- Protecting your Garden Potatoes from Insect Attack
- Potatoes Garden Planting Tips: Start with Certified Seed Potatoes— they're Disease-Free
- Raised Beds
- Plant Deeply to Grow Fuller Hills, a Second Billing, or Plant Potatoes under Mulch?
- Garden Tips: Here's how to get the earliest sweet corn ever!
- Garden Tips: Here's how to grow the earliest sweet corn ever!
- Garden revolves: Patios
- Potato
- Timber Decking and Steps
This table has attached benches, which adds stability and is easy to move around the yard for mowing and rearranging. … Flower Bulbs
Our mixture is an extra fine blend of all shapes and sizes to use for wall hangings, baskets, vases, fruit bowls, ladles, pipes and even bird houses. … Loved Growers
For much of the time her work was a partnership with her beloved husband, David, an architectural historian for whom Barnsley was the family home. … Temporary Plants
Break up large clods of soil with a spade or the back of a rake, and then smooth the surface into a level bed ready for planting. … Spring Bulbs