Do you want to know how to grow sweet potatoes? Here’s how to turn one grocery store sweet potato into pounds and pounds of more sweet potatoes.
I will guide you through my tried-and-true method for growing enough sweet potatoes to last you through winter from nothing more than a single sweet potato and some good soil.
Last year I grew and harvested nearly 100 pounds of sweet potatoes grown in my ornamental garden beds from one sweet potato.
Sweet potatoes are a perfect crop to grow if you are looking to become more self-sufficient, less dependent on the grocery store, wanting to lower your food budget, or trying to find food to last you through winter on your homestead.
This post will provide you with all the information you need to start growing sweet potatoes.
Why Grow Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes are a nutritious tuber that are easy to grow, store well through winter, and can be baked or cooked in a wide variety of dishes.
They are high in fiber, full of beta carotene, vitamin C, and potassium. This Healthline article explains more about the nutritional content of sweet potatoes.
After curing, sweet potatoes need no extra processing–no canning, no freezing, no dehydrating–to last through the winter and even through spring if stored in a dark, cool, dry location. This is huge if you are growing a large garden and feeling overwhelmed by all the other produce coming in needing to be processed.
And let’s not forget all the ways to cook sweet potatoes: roasted sweet potatoes, baked and stuffed sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie, mashed… the list goes on!
How to Grow Your Own Sweet Potatoes
So let’s go ahead and start growing our own sweet potatoes.
The only thing you really need is at least one sweet potato tuber.
Sweet potatoes are tubers, much like regular white potatoes, and grow underground.
You may already know that to grow white potatoes, you plant a whole or part of a potato that has an eye. That eye sprouts, grows a plant with leaves above ground, and roots and tubers below ground.
Sweet potatoes are similar, but instead of planting the actual potato (or tuber), you plant something called slips.
Slips are the rooted sprouts that grow out of a sweet potato tuber.
It’s simple to grow slips yourself, and one tuber will easily grow fifteen or more slips.
Once you have planted these slips, they will grow beautiful leafy vines above ground, and roots and sweet potato tubers below ground. As the growing season progresses, the warm weather and plenty of water and sunshine will make your tubers grow larger and larger until they are ready to be harvested.
What Kind of Sweet Potato Do I Need?
While you can buy sweet potato slips and even seed sweet potatoes online or at nurseries, you can easily grow slips from a grocery store sweet potato.
Look for a sweet potato that is firm, large, healthy-looking with good color, and organic.
An organic sweet potato is less likely to have been sprayed with sprout-inhibitors and will grow slips more readily than non-organic.
Or check your pantry and see if you have an old sweet potato that has already started to sprout.
I love the regular old orange-fleshed, reddish skinned sweet potato, but I have also grown a white-fleshed sweet potato and purple sweet potato.
The most common orange sweet potato varieties include Beuregard, Jewel, and Garnet. I have no idea what varieties I have grown, but if I had to guess, the orange one was a Garnet. It was very moist and I have seen them labeled “Garnet Sweet Potatoes” at the store sometimes.
When To Plant Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes take around 100 days from planting to harvest. Harvesting them in cool weather after a light frost is supposed to yield the sweetest potatoes.
Our first frost date is October 10, so I try to get my potatoes planted by late May to early June, just in case we get an early cold snap.
This means I start my slips a little over a month before then, in mid- to late April.
If you need help knowing when it’s safe to plant, check out this post I wrote that discusses this topic.
How To Grow Sweet Potato Slips
There are two recommended methods to grow sweet potato slips.
Water Method
In the first, you partially submerge a sweet potato in water and wait for it to grow roots and slips.
Poke toothpicks into the sweet potato and place the bottom half in a jar of water.
A quick way to find the bottom half of the potato is to look for small thin roots growing downward. Or one end may have eyes. That would be the sprouting end.
Once the tuber is submerged, provide warmth and light and change the water every few days. Roots and slips will start to grow.
Soil Method
The method I use is to partially plant the potato in soil. Roots and slips sprout much quicker when the potato is grown in soil versus in water.
To do this, I use a recycled container large enough to hold my potato, like an old berry container or takeout container. I poke holes in the bottom if the container doesn’t already have them and fill it with soil.
Next, I put my sweet potato in the soil, burying half of it and leaving the other half exposed to air.
I give the soil a good watering before placing it under a grow light (or if the weather is warm enough, outdoors in indirect light). I also put a heat mat under the potato if I happen to have one available.
After 7-14 days, roots and sprouts begin to form. Once the sprouts have several healthy leaves and are three or four inches long, I carefully pull them off the sweet potato, trying to keep any extra roots attached.
These sprouts, or slips, are planted in my garden immediately in loose, rich, well-draining soil.
The mother tubers will continue to produce more slips as you pluck them off, so keep them watered and happy until you have all the slips that you need.
Planting Sweet Potato Slips
If you don’t want to plant your slips immediately, or if the slips don’t have roots yet, you can plant them in small pots or keep them in a jar of water until roots form.
This is a great time to get your slips acclimated to life outdoors. Begin hardening them off by gradually exposing them to sunlight, starting from one hour, and adding two more hours until they are able to be in full sun all day without scorching or wilting.
In my experience, sweet potato slips are pretty hardy. As long as they have several small leaves, they can go into the ground without roots and a long hardening off process, and will eventually grow them as long as they are sufficiently watered.
Sweet Potato Plant Care
Sweet potatoes like loose, well-draining soil. They appreciate regular deep watering, but do not want to stay wet or soggy.
I typically give my sweet potatoes a small handful of balanced organic granular fertilizer when I plant them, and nothing else after and they have grown just fine for me.
You will know your sweet potatoes are happy because they will start growing large leaves and long vines rapidly. They may even flower.
Sweet potatoes are related to morning glory (ipomoea) and their flowers look a lot like it!
I hope you try growing your own sweet potatoes this year. As you can see, growing slips is not that complicated, and one tuber can give you so many slips, which in turn will yield many pounds of potatoes.
I have been so grateful to have a large crop of sweet potatoes ready and waiting for me through the fall and winter holidays, and even into spring.
Growing your own sweet potatoes is a simple way to be more self-sufficient and keep your homestead well-stocked for many months.
If you want to learn more about harvesting and curing sweet potatoes, check out this post next!