Crop Guide – Sweet Potatoes
Common Name Sweet potato (or sweetpotato)
Scientific Name Ipomea batata
Uses Edible root crop; stores well; eaten whole, in muffins, mashed, fries, chips, etc. Leaves are also edible, but not typically consumed.
Crop Timeline
- Seeds: Sweet potatoes are not grown from seeds.
- Transplants: Obtain slips (bareroot, vegetative cuttings) for planting in late May to early June. Stick slips in loose soil and keep moist for about a week while roots are established.
- Watch a video on How to Plant Sweet Potatoes
Planting tips
- Fertilizer: Incorporate a complete organic fertilizer in the soil 2 weeks before planting
- Number of plants per square foot: 1 slip per square foot
- Growing structures: raised beds, in ground, containers
- Frost protection: None; sweet potatoes should be harvested before first frost.
Harvest
- 100-120 days after planting
- Each slip may produce 3-5 sweet potatoes
- Find where the vine was planted in the soil and carefully dig around the stem
- Use plastic trowels to loosen the soil trying to avoid damaging potatoes. Use hands to dig once soil is loosened.
- Watch a video on How to Harvest Sweet Potatoes
Pests
There are no major pests of concern for sweet potato in the school garden environment. Generally speaking, a good practice for all crops is to use crop rotation from season to season to break the life cycle of insects and soil pathogens.