I forgot sweet potato slips, panic

I got an email yesterday afternoon, saying my sweet potato slips are  in and please pick them up. I completely forgot that I had ordered them, don't know anything about planting them and most all of my squares are full of other things. I can use some help with planting instructions and how much room they take. I suppose I could build another 4x4 and fill it with MM if I need to today. Do they need extra depth?

We put them in with our regular potatoes, so yes, extra depth.

The vines will take over the garden if you're not careful!

Sw. potatoes are good for you and taste good too. They make approx. 3 lg potatoes under each vine. They can be given a bed of their own, or can be grown up a trellis. If just allowed to run anyway they want they will take over. If allowed to run, they will root at nodes on the vine, but normally the potatoes are thin and skinny at the nodes. You can keep them trimmed, you can eat the leaves like spinach. The leaves at end of vine are most tender. I give them a bed of their own but, some folks plant near a trellis that has beans or cukes, and keep them trimmed well.
My first yr. I dug the potatoes in the fall. When I was doing fall cleanup, I had a bump in the isle. When I checked, the sweet potato root had gone thru/under the weed cloth and had made a very lg potato under the weed cloth and grass in the isle.
Depending of the type of sw. potato, they will make potatoes directly under the vine or up to several ft away.
Here is a link for you if I can get it to work. They have a lot of info on growing sw potatoes.
http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/

If your space is used up, how about planting in a straw bale? Or other large container?

Thanks for the information littlejo, the sandhill article was just what I needed. As a result of reading that I am going to put my slips in the greenhouse. It was unused because we were out of town for so long we didn't plant anything in it. That definition of heat units really hit me up the side of the head with why all of my early starts did nothing for so long and are just now beginning to grow. We had a wet, cold spring. Slow learner 

Marc, I thought about the straw bale as one of my friends who also got slips is doing it that way. I forgot about the greenhouse and since sweet potatoes need heat it should workout OK.

The sweets will love the heat in the greenhouse.
You can start your own next yr. Put the small ones that cannot/won't be peeled in some damp peat moss and just plant the sprouts. This prevents disease that may be in potato.

I have added several sweet potato sections in my garden.  All I did is drop compost on top of an area of ground 2-3 inches deep, set the plants/slips in the compost, then added about 1 foot of straw all around.  I have added additional layers of compost and straw over the past couple months as it breaks down.  

Last year I had a small patch that was equal to 6 square feet of roots and the plants spread about 10 foot diameter.  I had over 35 lbs of sweet potatoes!!!!  They were so good :-)

Before I read this, I didn't know about sweet potato slips, so when I had forgotten about some organic sweet potatoes I had purchased a while back and saw they were growing at the eyes, I cut them up and planted them like regular potatoes.  I now have little bunches of sprouts coming out through the ground.  Am I still going to get sweet potatoes?  Or do I need to dig them up and separate the "slips"?

I didn't know last year that I was supposed to do slips.  I literally threw a huge sweet potato that had sprouted and had a dozen huge slips on it, out into the garden as we were leaving town for a month.  That's the potato that produced 35 lbs!  At this point if there were disease it probably would already have gotten into your soil so let it roll.  If you find any disease, don't plant sweet potatoes or potatoes for a few years.  
I'm going off of minimal knowledge so if I'm wrong, anyone that knows better than I do please correct me!!!!

audrey.jeanne.roberts wrote:I didn't know last year that I was supposed to do slips.  I literally threw a huge sweet potato that had sprouted and had a dozen huge slips on it, out into the garden as we were leaving town for a month.  That's the potato that produced 35 lbs!  

Audrey.jeanne.roberts, did you add more soil/compost/straw/anything to it, like when you keep adding to a regular potato?

Here's my sweet potato plants.



There are more little sprout in the back row and the yellow flowers in the back of the 4 x 4 bed are just yarrow.   Should I pull out and separate?

I added mulch as needed to keep the moisture in.  Sweet potatoes are a root, they don't grow up the stem like some varieties of potatoes do (if I remember correctly, not all potatoes do that, only indeterminate types).  

I do add mulch as the season goes along since we are a very hot and dry climate during the summer.  It helps with keeping their roots cool and moisture in the soil.  I tend to alternated layers with straw and wood chips (chipped branches with leaves under 3 inches in diameter).