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Growing Sweet Potatoes is very easy in tropical and sub tropical climates. (And not difficult in cool climates, either.) In fact, the question is not how to grow sweet potatoes, it's rather how to stop sweet potato vines from taking over the whole garden! Sweet potato is a very invasive creeper... But even though they can be a pain in the you know what if not managed (harvested regularly), you absolutely have to grow sweet potatoes! Why? Sweet potato is one of the most useful food plants in a warm climate:
Sweet potatoes are the perfect substitutefor normal potatoes. Sweet potatoes have less disease problems. Growing sweet potato vines is much easierthan growing other potatoes. Sweet potatoes are very nutritious. And sweet potatoes grow with little water and fertilizer. You can use sweet potatoes in the kitchen just like you would use potatoes. Boil them, steam them, mash them, fry them... But sweet potatoes have more uses: Young sweet potato shoots and leaves are yummy in stir fries and salads. Sweet potatoes also make a wonderful quick growing ground cover. You can use them as a living mulch and to keep weeds down. So, how do you grow sweet potatoes, and how do you keep them under control?
Sweet potatoes don't like heavy, waterlogged soils, cold weather, and fertilizers high in nitrogen (like chicken manure, it makes them grow lots of leaves but no potatoes).
The quickest and easiest way to grow sweet potatoes is to use cuttings. Simply cut a piece of a runner, about a foot (30 cm) in length. Remove all the leaves except for the tiny leaves at the very tip. Plant the cutting by covering the whole length with soil, only the leaves of the tip should stick out of the ground. The cuttings will root at every leave node. Not just the leave nodes under the ground will root. A sweet potato also grows roots from every leave node that develops as your cutting grows. If you can't get hold of cuttings you can start growing sweet potatoes by planting the tubers. You can use any shop bought sweet potatoes. Place them on the ground, cover them with soil, and keep them moist. The tubers will develop shoots, called slips. Slips can be snipped or pulled offand planted out when they are about 15 cm in size. The original root will continue to produce more slips.
Growing sweet potatoes requires some space, so plant them where they can spread. Space your cuttings or slips about a foot apart in a row, and leave three to four feet between rows. (If you plant in rows, that is...) Mulch thickly between plants and even between the beds to intially keep the weeds down. Once the sweet potatoes grow they will choke all weeds down themselves. For planting time the general recommendation is to plant a patch in spring. (May in the northern hemisphere, November in the southern). In a cool climate you may indeed have to get by with a single planting. Sweet potatoes do need four to six months of reasonably warm weather to mature. But in the tropics one big spring planting does not make sense, unless you are a commercial grower. Sweet potatoes don't keep well after harvest, so the best way is to plant a few cuttings every week or two. Just one row of one metre length, with three cuttings. They will take about 16 to 18 weeks to mature in warm weather, longer in cooler weather. That way you can grow sweet potatoes all year round, and you don't find yourself with a big pile of them all at once.
After four to six months, depending on the temperatures, your sweet potatoes will be ready. You will see that the original stem of your cutting or slip will have thickened, and when you carefully lift the plant with a fork you should find two or three sweet potatoes at the base. You can harvest sweet potato leaves and young shoots at any time, it does not affect the plant or tubers.