Growing Your Own Sweet Potatoes

There are few things more satisfying than picking food from your own garden. Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite crops and are relatively "easy" to grow. I am a gardener in southern Indiana, so while most of this information will apply to various regions around the country, you may have to make a few adaptions if you're in a more extreme climate.


At our homestead, we are lucky to have nice, loam soil as we are adjacent to a large creek and have the blessing of 'bottom land'. To prep the soil for our sweet potatoes, we use a digging fork to aerate and gently turn without tilling. The area we plant has been covered for several weeks with a black plastic silage tarp OR prepared using the sheet mulching method, OR by using our chickens. (For more information on how we create and prepare our garden areas, see our POST here) We might apply a bit of finished compost, but typically we find that sweet potatoes are "easy" and don't require much pampering.

Below you can see a few photos of how we make our "slips". Slips are 'starts' or tiny, rooted shoots. It is best to start with vigorous, high quality slips as these will produce the best plants resulting in the highest yield. Sweet potatoes are not related to potatoes, and are grown differently. If you are looking for information about growing potatoes, see our POST here.

If you do not have your own sweet potatoes that you grew before and you need to make slips, I recommend finding a local farmer with some tubers for sale, or you can purchase them from a natural foods store. It is very important that they are organically grown. If you buy tubers that are non-organic, they have typically been sprayed with an anti-fungal or growth inhibitor, which will prevent them from sprouting. However, if you were in a "survival" situation you might still try to grow starts from non-organic tubers.

Time your sweet potato planting! Unlike potatoes, sweet potatoes are a warm/hot weather crop. The plants cannot tolerate cool temperature, and thrive in intense heat. In Indiana in zone 6b, we do not plant our sweet potato slips until early to mid June.

From one sweet potato tuber you can get between 8 to 20 new plant starts. As you can see in the pictures below, you first select the nicest looking tubers (ideally from last year's harvest) and then place them on a bed of potting soil in a large, shallow container with drainage holes. Then cover them with about 2 inches of soil. You then will water them well, leave in a warm, sunny area and keep moist. I typically have to water the flat one to two times per day.

Within about two weeks you will see shoots emerging. As soon as they have leafed out a bit, clip them as low and close to the tuber as you can, remove them from the tuber and pluck them into a jar of water. Some may already have a tiny little white root, some might not. They will root in the jar of water. I place my jar of water in a sunny windowsill and add new "slips" to it daily, until I have many that are rooted. Some of the shoots that you clip off will already have tiny roots, and some may not root until they are in your jar of water.

Notice the picture below of what you should be looking for: beautiful, leafy green shoots. If they are thin, white and "leggy" that means they are not getting enough sunlight.

Once your shoots are rooted in the jar of water (which typically takes about 1 to 5 days) it's time to plant.

Since these are small, bare root plants, the transplanting process can be stressful on them so it is best to have prepared your bed ahead of time. Stress will also be mitigated by planting in the evening, about two hours before sunset is fine.

We just planted our sweet potatoes today (June 19th) in southern Indiana. Sweet potatoes take between 90 to 120 days to mature to harvest time, depending on the variety.

Dig a small hole in your garden soil and insert the sweet potato slip at an angle. Simply backfill the dirt around the lower stem and tiny roots, leaving the green leaves above. Make sure to water in the plants very well. Deer and rabbits are very attracted to the sweet tasting leaves, so make sure to cover them with an agricultural fabric such as Agribon if needed. At our homestead, the dog takes care of the critters.


We harvest our tubers at the end of September, just before the fall frosts come and before the underground burrowing mice have had time to nibble them. We used to wait until after a frost killed back the green leaves above, but were disappointed to find prize winning tubers half eaten by voles and mice! Harvesting before the frosts seems to do the trick. 

In our gardens, the above ground plant parts of the sweet potato vines form a thick mat. it can be labor intensive to dig and pull back the leaves which we roll into large mass, digging the tubers all the while. 

The tubers can be gently washed and then cured before eating. 

The curing stage is important for optimum flavor. We cure in a warm shed out of direct sunlight for about one to two weeks. 

Then, you can store them at room temperature in a well ventilated dark place in your home. 

Several years ago I raised Angora rabbits for they fur to be spun into soft yarn. They loved to eat the sweet potato leaves as a treat. The leafy mass should also be used as an addition to the compost pile or fed to chickens. 

I hope you feel inspired to try growing your own sweet potatoes. There are many different varieties, many heirlooms. Some have white or lavender colored skins and flesh, very different than the traditional orange colored Beauregard variety. These starts must be ordered from specialty companies online, which can be found by doing a quick search. 

Make sure to save a handful of your best tubers for starting new slips in the following spring. Also, it is always wise to offer one of your prize winners to the land wights (spirits of the land). I believe they appreciate these little gifts and may help ensure a good harvest in the future. 

~~V