For a faster start, plant sweet potatoes slips in raised beds

Sweet potatoes are a great substitute for white potatoes in your diet. Many people can't, or shouldn't, eat white potatoes. White potatoes contain small amounts of solanine, a naturally occurring chemical compound that can trigger painful arthritis flare-ups in some people who are sensitive to it.  Sweet potatoes belong to an entirely  different plant family (morning glory family) so they do not contain solanine.

While white potatoes are grown from pieces cut from potato tubers, sweet potatoes are grown from rooted cuttings called “slips.” Slips are nothing more than small vines taken off of a sprouted sweet potato tuber.

Sweet potatoes require warm soil and weather conditions to grow and thrive. They also require a fairly long growing season to produce the largest harvest. That means you need to get them into the ground early, just as soon as the chance of frost is over and the soil temperature reaches 60 – 65 degrees F.

One way to increase soil temperature earlier is to build raised planting beds. The beds will also help provide good drainage.

Build simple raised beds by digging a shallow trench next to the area that will become a bed. The topsoil from the trench is piled up onto the bed. This type of beds will settle and become somewhat flatter as the season progresses.

Plant the slips by digging a small hole in the center of the bed. Place the slips deep into the soil. Leave only the top leaves sticking out of the ground.

Add a small splash of starter fertilizer or soluble plant food to the plant. Tuck the soil around the slip and you are finished.

Place slips about 12-16 inches apart in the row. If you need more than one row, construct the beds about 3 to 6 feet on center. This gives the vines plenty of room to grow.

Sweet potatoes don't require much fertilizer, but make sure you water your plants regularly to get them established and keep them growing. Additional watering later in the season will help them produce large roots.

Keep the weeds out of your sweet potato patch, especially when the plants are still small. The leaves of the growing plants will start to fill in empty spaces and keep weeds from getting a start. Weeding will become easier as the sweet potato vines grow larger and larger, keeping new weeds from getting a start.

It’s sometimes difficult to find sweet potato slips because they usually sell out early. So look for them now to plant later. You can temporarily store your bundle of slips in a pot of soil. Keep them watered until you are ready to plant.

Our planting season has finally arrived!