Sweet Potato in Ohio

[HunkieDorie23]

I know that they are a lot of Ohio grower in this site, I want to try sweet potatoes this year but have not idea how to do it. My last frost date is May 21st. When do I plant and what do I need to do to prepare the area? I know they had sw pot. slips last year at the feed store so I can get some starts but I don't know what to do with them when I bring them home.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm not in Ohio but to me sweet potatoes are one of the easiest thing to grow. They do spread out a whole lot so give them lots or room. They will overwhelm anything within four feet or maybe more.

Sweet potatoes are warm weather plants. The ground really needs to be warm for them to grow. I'm not sure how long your growing season is. It probably does not matter too much where you are, but different varieties mature at different rates. Some are 90 day to maturity and some are 110. This does not mean they take 90 or 110 days to maturity, but the 90 should mature faster than the 110. If I remember right, Beauregard is a 90 day variety and is a pretty common variety.

How I do it is to create a hill about 12" to 14" high, set the slips in that row spaced about 9" to 12" apart. The vines will run everywhere but most extension sites recommend around 9" to 12" spacing. After setting the slips, I water. That is about it.

If you get slips that do not have roosts on them, don't sweat it. If it stays dry after I set them out, I will water some more, but once they start to grow they are OK. Last year, I cut the top off a slip that I thought was too much green for the roots and stuck that top in damp ground. It did rain often the next two weeks so the ground did stay damp, but that top grew and produced sweet potatoes. That's what makes them so easy. They are tough!

Sweet potatoes are not like regular potatoes. You do not normally have a seed potato, though in long growing seasons you can use seed potatoes to start them. I never have but others on this forum have done that. The sweet potatoes grow down. The reason for the hill is to make them a whole lot easier to dig. They will grow and produce if you don't start out with them on a hill, but they are a lot harder to dig.

I inititally thought the spacing recommended on the extension sites was to crowd them a bit to get marketable sized sweet potatoes. Some people do not want them too big, my wife for example. Too hard to slice. But I've read from different sources that if the weather is dry while the sweet potato is forming, it will get big. If the soil is wet, the potatoes will be long and skinny.

Hope you get something useful out of this. Good luck!

 

[HunkieDorie23]

If wet makes them long and skinny then mine will look like green beans. It is supposed to rain 9 of the next 10 days.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The wet is when they are forming potatoes, not early in the growing season.

 

[thistlebloom]

Good info on sweet potatoes Ridgerunner, thanks!

 

[wifezilla]

My last frost date in close to yours. Last year I grew garnet sweet potatoes. That is a LONG season variety so I was lucky to get a harvest, but it was a great experiment.

I grew some in old feed bags full of dirt and compost with holes poked in the bottom. The rest I grew in a little tykes toy box painted black and filled with the dirt/compost mix.

This year I ordered slips of SHORT SEASON varieties and will grow in bags and the toy box again. I put the bags along a fence that gets good light and the plants climb the chain link. Looks great and you get nummy food at the end of the season.

Here are some threads about my sweet potatoes and my search for short season varieties with a link to the site I ordered from...
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=30062
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=269766