How to grow Sweet Potato

Ipomoea batatas

Sweet potatoes love elevated field or beds especially in porous soils containing humus and fine river sand.if your zone is situated in temperate regions,it is best to plant the types of sweet potatoes coming from yomitan son,okinawa,japan.they thrive in average temp. 15 degrees celcius.

Growing Sweet Potato from seed

Will not come true from seed – sterile.
Sweet potato is grown from tubers, eg, other sweet potatoes, or cuttings from the vines.
You can just buy a sweet potato from the shops and that will be your starting tuber.
You can start the tubers early if you need the extra warm days, by putting a tuber in water on your windowsill, or on a pot with potting mix somewhere warm inside, water regularly. When they start to sprout and grow enough that you can see the little rootlets starting, you can cut those off and start transplanting them into the garden when it is spring. This way, out of one tuber you can get several plants started.
Or you can just plant each sprouting tuber.
Or if it is warm enough, just bury unsprouted tubers 10cm underground.

Sow at a depth of approx. 3.9 inches (10.0 cm) and aim for a distance of at least 1.46 feet (45.0 cm) between Sweet Potato plants.

By our calculations*, you should look at sowing Sweet Potato about 20 days after your last frost date .

Transplanting Sweet Potato

1.)Under each leaf, there’s a root growing out. Take a cutting, and plant it in soil. That’s it! “As long as there’s a leaf, stem & root, it’ll grow.” by Malaysian Novice Gardener 2.)sweet potatoes are creeping vine plant.as it grow longer, roots are developing in each node(below the leaves).it is best recommended that cutting with 3 nodes is best planting material.In the Phil. Tropics it is locally known as kamote and doumah.if you purchase sweet potato tuber and want to propagate, simply place the tuber in cool shade untouched and after a week or more, sprouts of buds will develop.after a month you have long vines and ready for cuttings.do this in last part of winter so that in spring you will have fully developed vines and good cuttings for summer planting.Sweet potato is one of the best root crop for approaching climate change in this planet.

Ensure that temperatures are mild (minimum night temperatures should be around 20°C / 68°F) and all chance of frost has passed before planting out, as Sweet Potato is a half hardy plant.

Harvesting Sweet Potato

You can ‘bandicoot’ for tubers by digging into the soil with your hands and pulling off tubers as you want to eat them, and leaving the rest of the plant to grow.
Once you pick tubers, they need to be ‘hardened off’ on the sun for a few days, or they can taste bitter. Also this helps to preserve them if you are storing them.

The leaves can be picked and eaten like spinach, especially the new shoots. * here in the Philippines,onced the fully developed vines display flowers(smaller than morning glory),root tubers are ready for harvest.in light soils it is easy to harvest. By gently pulling up the part of root in light textured soil, part of tuber will be seen and if big enough remove the tuber by using hard metallic object used by gardeners.

The time to harvest tubers is indicated by the yellowing of the foliage. Be gentle when digging as sweet potatoes grow close to the surface.2

Seed Saving Sweet Potato

Save healthy tubers by allowing them untouched in beds. Before frost come cover the plot with protective shield or insulator.if it survive the frost uncover and see how sprouts develop in spring.

How long does Sweet Potato take to grow?

These estimates for how long Sweet Potato takes to sprout, grow and harvest are from real observations from real gardeners, right around the world.

Days to Germination How long does it take Sweet Potato to germinate?
9 days

Average 9 days | Min 6 days | Max 38 days (7)

Days to Transplant How long until I can plant out Sweet Potato?
+ 26 days

Average 26 days | Min 21 days | Max 35 days (2)

Days to Maturity How long until Sweet Potato is ready for harvest / bloom?
+ 233 days

Average 233 days | Min 114 days | Max 576 days (5)

Total Growing Days How long does it take to grow Sweet Potato?
= 268 days

When should I plant Sweet Potato?

Our when to plant Sweet Potato estimates are relative to your last frost date.

When to sow The number of days to sow Sweet Potato before or after your last frost date.
20 days after Last Frost Date

Sweet Potato Etymology

The Tagalog word for sweet potato is Kamote. Probably it means an edible coming from.earth/soil. Ka(kain-edible)+ mo(mula-from)+ te (terra- earth)

Sweet Potato Folklore & Trivia

Sweet potatoes are related to morning glories (Ipomoea tricolor). Ipomoea batatas require 4 month of warm temperatures in order to develop full size tubers.2

Other names for Sweet Potato

Red kumara, sweet potato, kamote, douma, Sweet potato vine, marbled

Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.

Misspellings: Yams, Sweet potatos, Sweet potatoes, Ipomea batatas, cantonese: Fan Shi Yeep or Shi Miu Choy

Footnotes

1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato

2 gardening.about.com/od/vegetables/p/Sweet-Potatoes.htm


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