You can purchase sweet potato plants at a garden center or online.
You can also grow your own plants.
How To Grow Sweet Potato Plants
1. Get a firm healthy sweet potato. If the sweet potato is starting to sprout, you have a head start.
Assume that most grocery store sweet potatoes are treated with an anti-sprouting chemical. Look for organic sweet potatoes or get from a gardening friend. My sweet potatoes came from my mom and a friend. I don't know what variety they are but both of them had excellent sweet potato crops last year and they kept very well all winter. Sounds like traits I want to encourage!
2. Place the sweet potato in a jar of water. You want to submerse most of the sweet potato while allowing a couple inches above water. One of my sweet potatoes was so large it couldn't fit well in the jar. Change the water occasionally to keep from molding. Place in sunlight. Soon the sweet potato will send out sprouts, or slips.
3. When the sprouts are four to five inches long, pull them off the sweet potato. The sweet potato will grow more sprouts.
4. Place the sprouts in water. You can place a bunch of sprouts in the same jar. They will quickly grow roots.
5. When the sprout is well rooted, plant in a hill of soil about ten inches high. Wait until the soil is warm. In our area, this is in June.Sometimes we plant them after we pull out the peas to maximize our garden space.
Keep the plants well watered while the roots are being established. We like to mulch the hill to keep back the weeds as the sweet potato grows.
While sweet potatoes can't be planted too early because they hate cold weather, they also can't be planted too late. My aunt, who has grown sweet potatoes to sell for years, says to plant on July 4 at the very latest in our area of PA. Sweet potatoes need several months of growing time before the first frost to form tubers.
Some years I have started my sweet potato plants too late. They need adequate time to root before being planted outside. I have found that the beginning of March is a good time to start my plants.
For more information and recipes for sweet potatoes see the Grow, Eat, Enjoy Sweet Potatoes.
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For general gardening information and our Pennsyvania gardening experiences see the Gardening Page.
I just plant a whole sweet potato and don't worry with the slips. Last year I planted 5 or 6 potatoes and got a bushel of sweet potatoes in return. I really don't know if the way I did it was correct or not but it worked well for me. Sherri
ReplyDeleteI did the same thing and it's growing find outside.
DeleteI quarter a sweet potato and get 4 nice plants. We LOVE sweet potatoes!!
DeletePameele -do you have to chit your sweet potato quarters like regular potatoes or do you just put them straight in the ground?
DeleteI bought a sweet potato at the store and forgot to about eating it, it started growing some root so I planted it just to see what would happen(I wasn't really into gardening at the time) I didn't prepare the ground & I planted it in the middle of a broken up concrete slab. It made the most beautiful flowers(I had no idea) an in spite of the everything I got a bunch of potatoes not pretty but edible. Yvette P. S. I live in LA we can grow most anything and winters here or optional. :)
DeleteThanks! Saving this one for next year. ~Liz
ReplyDeleteSherri -
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered if that would work. Sounds like you had a great return on the investment. One thing I like about sweet potatoes is that you can save a potato from year to year and never need to buy new seed.
Gina
Yeh we usually throw our green scraps onto the soil, like compost. One year we put sweet potato skins out and the plant grew up aswell. I do the same for potatoes, ones that havent been used and start eye-ing, I plant and a couple of months later I get wonderful "new" potatoes..
ReplyDeleteMy "garden counselor", an 89 year old sister in our church, always starts her sweet potatoes on her birthday, March 5th. She is a wealth of garden information even tho she isn't gardening any more.
ReplyDeleteWhat I appreciate the most about this post Gina is that you actually say what to do after they sprouted. I have yet to see one place- even in The Backyard Homestead, whose method I'm trying now, follow the process through to the ground.
ReplyDeleteI tried a water method last year that had chunks suspended in water, and the mold was uncontrollable. Probably because they were chunks. I'd be interested to know how many slips total you end up with off those 3 potatoes.
Great post- Thanks!!
I got 40 sprouts planted off of one organic sweet potato
DeleteI would like to know if you are to only plant the sprouts off the original potato or both the sprouts and the potato? Because my potato is growing roots in the water. Thanks
DeleteI only plant the sprouts, not the potato. But maybe you could plant the potato. I'm not sure.
DeleteGina
How many months before reaping and how would I known when its ready. I planted in a pot
DeleteThank you Gina!!
ReplyDeleteThe post answered a lot of questions! Appreciate the time you took sharing!!
JoAnn
Try keeping plants in moist cocopeat;
ReplyDeleteI think it is easier than water- No mold
I am so going to try this indoors very soon.. looks pretty easy and love growing sweet potatoes outdoors. thanks so much for the information you have provided.. I was doing a search to get the specifics and I like that you added photos to show them sprouting..
ReplyDeleteWhat is Cocopeat?
ReplyDeleteCoconut husk
DeleteWhat a great idea!
ReplyDeleteI am trying it this year, and I hope it isn't too late. I actually tried growing them right on the soil from potato seeds, and they did pretty well until someone in my community garden decided to weed wack everything by the end of the season. I lost all of my potatoes.
Finger crossed :)
All you need to grow sweet potatoes are the eyes. Not sure if grocery store yams will work or if they've been treated. Just cut the sweet potato so there are eyes in each piece. Plant and tend.
ReplyDeletewe used to do this as kids but never planted them...my Mother had them in the house and just let them keep growing...they made wonderful pot plants - you dont need to keepchanging the water - just use a little each day - the plant will soak it all up :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea to use sweet potatoes as house plants!
DeleteGina
Trader Joe's sells beautiful organic sweet potatoes that work well. Good old' TJ's.
DeleteMany years ago, we always used sweet potatoes as house plants. They are so very pretty. Now days you can buy sweet potatoes off line that have different color flowers. I love them!
DeleteMy mom used to grow sweet potato vines as houseplants. Thanks for bringing back that memory.
DeleteHow long does it take to grow a decent sized sweet potato? We planted a few in the back yard earlier last year. Now we have runners all over the place. They look kind of cool just growing over the lawn. I heard the leaves are edible? And is it true where ever the vine attaches in the ground, that is where a potato should be? Yes I should also mention that we live in the tropics and it never gets cold. So the growing season is year round..
ReplyDeleteHere is takes about four months - but since your climate is so different then mine, I won't even be able to guess! I never knew the leaves were edible. we have found that it is best to keep the plants trimmed back. We usually plant the sweet potatoes at the side of the garden and mow off anything that grows into the yard. That way the strength of the plant goes into growing sweet potatoes and not just vines!
DeleteHappy Gardening!
Gina
Sweet potatoes leaves can be eaten, we Chinese (in the tropics) use to fry them with shrimp paste together with chilli for taste... it's a nutritious dish...
DeleteI am waiting for the Asian store here in South Carolina to sell sweet potato tops which we cook as stir fry with garlic. In the Philippines we plant the stem direct in the soil and it easy to grow and have roots after several months. I would love to plant also here in US just to have sweet potato tops because it's late to have roots.
DeleteHi! I'm new here-love your site-glad I found you.
ReplyDeleteThis is my 3rd year growing sweets. Last year was awful (maybe due to drought here in TX) but because of that I had a LOT of underdeveloped, small, spindly roots in my harvest. Since I abhor waste, I saved them over the winter.
I never did come up w/ a good use for them...and there I was, in May of this year when lo and behold these seemingly useless 'thickened roots' had begun to sprout. What to do?
Since I couldn't bear to see them go to waste...I planted them.
It's been 60 days and I just checked a couple...these cuties have healthy leaves, multiple runners and the tubers have begun to enlarge. YAY!
OK I'm sure there MUST be some perfectly sound and reasonable reasons why I have not been able to find anyone else who has reported on this practice...maybe diseases? pests? Who knows?-anyone else here ever heard of or tried it this way? I can't wait to see what the results may be.
Thanks. Have a great day and enjoy the Summer.
Hi,
DeleteI had the same problem here in NW Indiana. LOTS of little roots, very few of any decent size. And many were twisted into grotesque shapes. I've seen elsewhere that planting a whole potato will produce lots of vines, but not much more.
Hey guys, It's fine to plant the spindly sweet potato tubers the next season. As a plus they time themselves pretty well as far as sprouts, starting about the time to plant them. Where we are here in Indiana it works out pretty well as far as producing tons of usable underdeveloped tubers by simply letting the plants sit until the centers of the plants start to die back.
DeleteI've seen several places on the Internet that absolutely state NOT to plant the tuber. I'm curious as to whether they have ever tried it? As an example we are a family of seven and we usually plant 7 to 9 sprouting tubers that go on to cover approximately 500sq ft. of garden space. Beauregard is what we plant. The directions say 12 to 18 inches for spacing. We go at least 3 feet. The directions say sweet potatoes need well-drained soil that’s not too rich. Huh? Build your soil...in fact get a soil test and then go rich, your plants will thank you! I think what they mean is don't rev the plants with tons of nitrogen. It then states, tubers develop best in loose, sandy soil. Hey they got it right! Just about every garden plant with roots flourishes in loamy/sandy soil. Then it states, soil pH should be 5.8 to 6.2. Ours runs 8.0...can you say limestone state! Our results are 500sq ft. of vines that get lopped off with shovels when they reach the edges of the plot.
We then harvest approximately 200lbs. of sweet potatoes in two wheel borrows, from less than a dozen plants. Many tubers hit 8 to 10 lbs. Because we have sandy/loamy soil we can water daily, because we water daily the plants become enormous, because the soil is very rich the tubers are gigantic and the taste reflects that the plants don't need much else. We do fertilize at least three times during the growing season, but nothing special, just handfuls of .50cent-a-bag 12-12-12 broadcast equally over the plants.
To recap:
Soil fertility IS important.
Watering regularly IS important.
Soil texture IS important.
NOT crowding a plant that wants to run like a dog off the chain IS important.
Soil pH? We grow em in 8.0... NOT so important.
Plant husbandry...eh, pretty important. Take care of weeds until the plant turns into a monster and smothers them itself. Watch for bug infestations and powdery mildew in Indiana. Other than that...Do those things and you should be good.
The leaves of the sweet potato can also be eaten as a vegetable . It can be stir fried .
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, didnt think it was gona be so simple
ReplyDeleteWhat I need to know is when to harvest them every article I have read tells how to plant but never how to tell when they are ready! I planted mine in June and lots off leaves but don't know when to pick!!!!!!!!! please help!
ReplyDeleteJanet -
DeleteI don't know how it is in your area or climate, but here in PA, sweet potatoes will grow as long as the leaves are green. As soon as there is even a light frost, the leaves will turn black. We like to dig the sweet potatoes right before our first frost, or if we miss it, then as soon as we can after the frost. Once the leaves die, the sweet potatoes will start to spoil if they are not removed from the ground. So we like to get them out as soon as we can.
Gina
Do the potato's need Full sun?
ReplyDeleteYes, they need full sun.
DeleteGina
If you are growing for ornamental use the sweet potato vines really like afternoon shade.
DeleteDo you suppose these could be planted in a raised bed in the house, or would they get enough light?
ReplyDeleteSweet potatoes do need a lot of sun. And they grow huge vines. The vine would grow in the house but I'm not sure they would produce potatoes. I guess you could try it!
DeleteGina
hello gina
ReplyDeletehow long the whole process of sweet potato shoots up?
thanks :)
It really depends upon how warm and how much light the sweet potatoes get. It is hard to give a time but plan on a few weeks.
DeleteGina
Just wanted to add in that once the potatoes are vining, you can break off shoots and put them back into water with a bit of Roottone and they will root too. This is good if you were a bit early starting them and gives you more plants for the garden. I usually break them off around the knuckles by the leaf connections and give it an inch or two of stem.
ReplyDeleteHow much growing space do they require outdoor..per slip...i heard some crazyness about needing like 10sq ft of bedspace to yield a single pound...that seems like quite a bit...last year we tried and failed to grow 5 or so in a 4sq ft space
ReplyDeleteSweet potatoes do take a lot of space. I don't know what the recommendations are but ten square feet (which would be a bed 2 feet by 5 feet) does not sound unreasonable. Sweet potatoes grow large vines and need space to spread out. If your space is very limited, sweet potatoes might not be a good option.
DeleteGina
If you don't have a lot of ground space to dedicate to sweet potatos, then try a potato tower. There are ton's of ideas on pinterest and I think I've seen a few on Home Joys. I know of a couple of people who have had great success with sweet potato towers.
ReplyDeleteWhat do u mean by plant in a dirt mound? I am in central Florida do u think its ok to plant them year round?
ReplyDeleteUsually sweet potatoes are planted in a hill of soil to give the roots soft soil to grow their tubers. I don't know anything about the Florida growing season. Maybe your local extension office can help.
DeleteGina
Any more information on. The sweet potatoe towers? I live in an apartment so can't plant into the ground, but would absolutely love it of I could grow a plant or two.
ReplyDeleteLove sweet potatoes and we planted a few slips in the spring. They did well for us and we will do it again in 2015. I read your blog and follow it on facebook. Very informative. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI have recently started a blog about homesteading at:
http://southernurbanhomesteader.wordpress.com
I hope you can take a break and check it out.
Thanks,
Brenda at Southern Urban Homesteader
I would like to keep my potato in a big hanging basket, as an ornamental plant. Can I plant the whole potato, or only the shoots??
ReplyDeleteI would plant the shoots because eventually the potato itself will rot and become stinky. The young shoots will grow for a long time.
DeleteGina
I was just thinking that if I plant the whole potato in the soil, the plant can feed from the potato, if I ever forget to water it. What do you think??
DeleteThat might work! Give it a try. The vine may feed off the potato until it completely dries up and it may never rot. I'd try it!
DeleteGina
Hi Gina. God bless you! Thank you for this wonderful wealth of information.
ReplyDeleteI am really going to try this method of growing sweet potatoes. It is awesome and so much info from others. I'm very happy to have found this post. Easy to understand an follow.
Hi Gina, I have never tried to grow sweet potatoes, but I would like to try. Will they grow in a big tub like container?
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Regular potatoes can be planted in a bucket or tub but sweet potatoes grow much larger. If you didn't mind a vine trailing all over - and in the right place it could be pretty and decorative, it would probably work.
DeleteGina
I love all the commits and neat things to try. WARNING!!! If you have horses make sure they DO NOT get the sweet potatoes. It will kill them!
ReplyDeleteAre you sure about the sweet potatoes killing horses ???- here in Queensland Australia they use sweet potatoes the vines and the tubers to feed cattle. Never lost a cow or calf.
ReplyDeleteNaturally, not the best ones, we eat those. Yum. Lovely cut into smallish chunks or chips sprinkled with olive oil (or coconut oil) sprinkled with pepper and other herbs if you wish - bake in oven at about 170 deg C for about 30-45 minutes (depends on how thin and small you cut the potatoes) and they are delicious hot or cold. Our boys used to devour them - yummy. Peggywho Qld Australia
Does anyone know if you can grow them in Canada, like central Sask. or Alberta.
ReplyDeleteJust an idea ... not sure it will work. Try growing in a greenhouse for the cooler part of the year. While we certainly do not live in Canada (SW MO) we grew some veg in the middle of winter in green houses. Each bed was made of railroad ties (approx 8x4) and had a greenhouse frame over it. Another year we just built a larger greenhouse over several beds. Once the weather began to warm up we took the greenhouses down.
DeleteWe have friends that heat their greenhouse with a woodstove.
Anyway ... it might work for you?
Nice post! We really enjoy sweet potatoes and try to grow some every year ... however we always start ours by hiding the potatoes in a paper bag or box to ecourage sprouting ... no water needed. Once the sprouts are about 3" we transfer to water as you describe. Next year I'll try BOTH methods to see which is faster. :-)
DeleteBlessings,
Joanne in SW MO
Absolutely! NB Is all about their sweet potatoes. Try it next year. :-)
DeleteMy mom just cut a sweet potato in half and stuck it in a flower pot and keep them as house plants. ..they were beautiful
ReplyDeleteJust chiming in to say that the lazy way of going sweeties definitely works! I sprouted mine by letting it sit on top of the microwave until I had a bunch of healthy sprouts on one end, then I buried the whole thing lengthwise in a shallow hanging basket. I left the top side of the potato uncovered so I could keep an eye on it. I also cut it in half once it was in there.
ReplyDeleteIt's been over a month and it's growing like crazy and continues to sprout. The potato isn't rotting, it dried out after a few weeks and has been the same since.
I don't expect to get a harvest since the basket is so shallow, but I didn't plant it for that anyway.
Great tips! tahnks so much mate
ReplyDeleteI start middle of February, until mid march I have two flushes of rooted sprouts plus the sprout on the potato I plant them altogether in may. From one potato I get 10 to 15 plants. I also noticed that potatoes that comes from sprouts are a bit smaller compared to those which were planted together with potato...Im guessing that is due to starch deposit which feeds the plant in the beginning, probably better fertilizing would solve this
ReplyDeleteI tried starting sweet potaoes in water ( I have never tried any method before) ..but my potatoes are going mouldy and bubbles are coming out the eyes if the potatoes..I have had them in water for about 3 weeks now and no signs of sprouts yet...I just used grocery store sweet potatoes....HELP PLEASE and Thank you...my email is duboisleona6@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you didn't buy organic sweet potatoes. the regular ones are sprayed to prevent shoots so they won't develop plants. try organic sweet potatoes.
DeleteI did buy one in the shop too and just washed it first and it took 1.5 weeks longer than the vegi shop bought one
DeleteI just discovered a sweet potato in the bottom of my pantry that has sprouted - I did a Google search about growing them and your blog article came up - very informative - but mostly what I noticed is that you wrote it back in 2011, and comments have been left from the years in between with some great comments questions and answers from a number of people! We are at getting closer to the end of our summer here in Australia and I live in the southern end where we do get frosts in winter - I'm not sure how the planting will go, but then I'm surprised that a supermarket vegetable actually sprouted!! I'm looking forward to having a better look at your blog.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sharmayne
Hi, I am in the UK so wondered what advice you can please give me as our weather is so different to yours in the USA. Thanks Tracey
ReplyDeleteHello, Gina. Thanks for the good information and for sharing your experience. I've grown sweets for 4 years with fair success, always interested in improving. I'm in Zone 7, too, but in Northern Virginia. I've only seen a few sites that use a hilling technique. I'm wondering why you do that. Is it your soil in PA, or climate, or what? What are the benefits of that technique?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your answer. Robert
That is an interesting question. I guess I hill sweet potatoes because that is the way my mom always did it! We do have heavy clay soil which may be why. It sure makes it easy to dig them in the fall.
DeleteGina
Hi. We have only only recently tried sweet potato but enjoy them, mashed, roasted, chipped & in stews. I haven't got a big garden & being in Wales the weather is a bit mixed at the best of times! I think I will try to grow them in a pot in our green house, from slips after the plant has been in water. I just like to try growing different things. Thank you for info & inspiration. J from Wales
ReplyDeleteAt last I found someone that explained what to do after the roots and sprouts grow. Right now as I didn't know what to do I just let it grow and now have a gorgeous plant indoors, still in water though. now doing more, thank you
ReplyDeleteafter trying planting 1/4 potato's last yr.they didn't do well, I did notice that my garden where I planted the dirt was way to loose packed, and all I got were a lot of running roots and very, few very thin potato's, This year I'm planting in a different new area that is only tilled about 10-12" deep, I'm hoping this will yield me a better crop
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not July 4th yet, so I still have about two weeks to get my sprouting sweet potatoes in the ground. I was delighted to hear some of you talk about success in planting pieces of sprouted potato directly in the ground. I discovered two grocery store sweet potatoes staring to sprout as they hung in my wire veggies basket in the kitchen window - so for the past two weeks I have been wondering if I could still get something going with them this summer, so I covered them with a wet cloth, wondering about thhese "slips" I have seen for sale on line. So tonight, I did a search to learn about growing slips (I think I am too late for this) then I searched for "planting whole sweet potatoes", and found your site!! So - I will conduct an experiement - I will set one of my sweets up in a jar of water and I will cut the other one up with one sprouting eye per piece (like regular potatoes) and plant them. Then, we will see what happens!! What fun. At the very least, sounds like I will produce a lovely house plant. Cheers. Melody
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't work
ReplyDeleteI was searching for a refresher on sprouting sweet potatoes and it brought me here! So good to see your sweet, smiling face! I also see that you have had another baby since I last checked in. That is wonderful news!
ReplyDeleteI planted sweet potatoes in an old tire a couple years ago and had great results. I filled the tire with dirt and planted the slips in a mound. I ended up with a lot of big sweet potatoes all in the inside of the tire, did not have to dig down deep cause like I said they were all around the inside of the tire. If you buy the sweet potatoes from your grocery store and are not sure if they have been sprayed,try cleaning them in a solution of a forth cup of bleach to a gallon of water. Rinse it very well then put it in the glass of water. This should take care of the spray.
ReplyDeletejust place two sweet potatoes on the window sill in the kitchen, late march now, will plant in the tire in may. i'm in georgia.
ReplyDeleteTrès intéressée par les conseils donné et à partager.
ReplyDeleteHello Gina i hope you can answer. I cut it into half and change the water everyday but the smell is very foul and i think the potato is going to rotten. Although i can see 1 slip.
ReplyDeleteHow deep do you plant the eyes?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information. It was helpful. Cute family.
ReplyDelete