Experience with Sweet Potatoes?

[macly]

I've been searching through threads on growing sweet potatoes and think I understand the general concept. I've found a company that sells heirloom slips every spring, and they even have short growing season varieties. I'm wondering if anyone wants to share their successes or failures. What types of soil you have had luck with, how much room you needed, soil depth, and how much water?

Specifically, I have two 3'x3' raise beds at home with about 18" of raised soil and a 4'x12' raised community garden plot with only 6" of raised soil. I hesitate to put sweet potatoes at the community garden because I don't want to dedicate the entire plot to them, and I'm wondering if the vines will just take over. Plus I'm pretty sure the soil below the beds is fairly compact, and I'm wondering if 6" is enough for the tubers. Also, we are VERY dry here in the summer with almost no rain during the hot growing season. I've heard that if you don't water enough then the tubers may crack. Would a good soaking once a day be enough? Do you think a 3x3 bed would potentially yield a decent sized crop?

Thanks for any tips or experiences you may have. I'm really hoping to try them this summer. Thanks!!

[goldfinches]

All I know is, they prefer bad soil. So, I would put them in your worst spot. I've never been able to get them to grow bigger than fingerling size myself. And, their vines aren't huge, either, like squash vines. I would say they're more like a fluffy string bean width and probably 15 inches tall. They're actually beautiful vines, ones I would put into a pot arrangement.

[mumm]

Last year I gave my kids a couple of potatoes that had been left in the bottom the the pantry too long. I had no expectations other than to keep them busy for a while. We got at least 5 meals (family of 6) out of the 3 potatoes that I gave them. They were all conventional potatoes (non-organic) purchased at the grocery store and left in dark pantry for too long. One red, one white who knows what kind and one regular sweet potato. I was shocked at how many potatoes we got out of that. And when we "harvested" I was again just trying to keep the kids busy and helpful. I knew the plants were pretty big but didn't expect much from under ground. They done good, as my dad would say.

This will be my first summer trying to grow them intentionally. I've found places that sell potatos specifically for planting but wonder why I need to spend that extra money. I have not however found a place that sells sweet potatos for planting.

I didn't know they prefer poor soil. I should plant mine at home because my community garden soil is soooo rich.

[ms.shell]

I would say they're more like a fluffy string bean width and probably 15 inches tall.

This has not been my experience. I am WAY down south, where it gets really hot, and maybe they just do particularly well here. But my experience has been that the vines GROW and GROW and GROW. You can eat the greens, so last summer we were cutting them every day....which we HAD to do, because it seems like they grow a foot and a half daily. The potatoes form pretty shallow, i haven't had to dig very deep to harvest them. But I would say, definitely, from experience, that you want to give them their own bed. Last year I made a HUGE mistake of planting some in the middle of a new large bed....thinking, well, the vines will be like mulch and discourage weeds to give me a break from hoeing. This was one of my biggest mistakes last year as the sweet potatoes all through that garden were pretty crazy. We also had grasshoppers come through late summer and they decimated the vines; it looked horrible. But the potatoes were fine. We only had enough though for 2 huge meals from them- Thanksgiving and Christmas for lots of people, but this is why I grow them. This year, we will give them their own (4x4 or 8x8; we need to do some measuring and planning this weekend) bed or else we wont grow them. Good luck!

[medicmama]

I would love to grow sweets!

[conniebonnie]

we have grown sweet potatoes twice. both times well. we planted them in hill rows and then pretty much ignored them, in slightly sandy but not bad soil. both times we got plenty. this time we got about 80lbs out of 4 ten foot rows.
we cut the greens just before teh first frost and then lay them over the plants heads and then keep em in the ground for a few weeks. then dig them up very carefully. its like christmas.
BUT.
almost all of them rotted because it rained the week after we harvested (really, all week) and we couldnt get them cured. it sucked majorly.
so think ahead and find a place to cure them. they need something like80degrees for ten days to store well.