Sweet Potatoes

1 Potato...

One lone sweet potato, stretching out its vines, excited to create more.

If my memory serves me right, I started our ever-expanding sweet potato ground cover from one potato. 5 years ago one was buried 3 inches deep, this year we pulled out hundreds. 

Admittedly the sweet potatoes we harvested averaged the size of tennis balls- this is not to say we can’t grow them huge, some potatoes we miss on their first season look more like mandrakes from Harry Potter when we pull them a year or more after.

Why did sweet potatoes score 2nd of my favorite crops for Florida? The biggest reasons are: 1. They grow phenomenally; 2. They’ll put meat on your bones- they are actually something that can fill you up; many of us gardeners are seeking food that can actually fill our plates; 3. They are tasty and our culture is familiar with eating them; 4. and finally they add another dimension to a garden, they literally grow underground. 

To maximize your potatoes, what I recommend is growing your sweet potatoes in a row, once the vines get about 2ft long, cut all the vines in half, saving the trimmings. You can now plant those trimmings; the trimmings are quite hardy and easy to propagate. Make a row about 2 feet from your original row and plant your trimmings. Repeat this until your sweet potato bed is as big as you want it to be. You’ll get about 2 good potatoes from each trimming. It’s important to keep in mind that you are only going to get potatoes from the parts of the vines that root, so make sure your vines are rooting. The strategy above is a very good way to do this.

Key Takeaways

• LOVE HEAT!

• Substantial on the dinner plate.

• Will take over well prepared garden soil

• Trim, plant trimmings = ⬆️⬆️🥔’s