Sweet Potatoes

Does anyone in CA zone 9 (I'm in Visalia) grow sweet potatoes?  When do you start your slips?  When do you plant them out?  When do you harvest?  (How's that for a bunch of questions!) 

I've been researching.  Based on what I've read I could start slips now, plant them out in September and harvest in December after the first light frost?

Thanks!

Fresno here.  I haven't heard of planting in Sept.  Maybe someone else will come along who knows more than me.  Like, most everyone else!  

Last year was my first experiment with SP.  I had 2 totes of sweet potatoes.  I started the slips from 2 potatoes cut in half and suspended in water with toothpicks in Feb-March?  When they had slips with roots, I planted them (after last chance of frost).  Harvested in late October when the plants were basically dead and all I had were fingerlings.  They spent a couple months without good sun.  This year I have them in a better location where they will have sun until harvest time. May 5, 2016,

Thanks Sanderson.  I had a feeling I was too late.  Research told me the potato slips would be ready in 12 weeks; the potatoes ready 120 days after that.  Guess they weren't talking about our area. 

It did say that leaving them in the ground until after the 1st light frost would make them sweeter?  

Love the tote idea.  Holes in the bottom?  Mel's mix or something else?  In one blog it said they planted them in horse manure.  My kinda guy.  Am I the only one who thinks horses & their poop smells just fine?  My sister & I see someone with a horse, we always ask if we can smell him.  I do have a source for LOTS of horse poop!

This sounds like fun. I might just have to try this.

Mellen wrote:Thanks Sanderson.  I had a feeling I was too late.  Research told me the potato slips would be ready in 12 weeks; the potatoes ready 120 days after that.  Guess they weren't talking about our area.

I would go ahead and have some fun trying them anyway.  You will learn a lot, even if all you get are fingerlings. 

Love the tote idea.  Holes in the bottom?  Mel's mix or something else?  In one blog it said they planted them in horse manure.  My kinda guy.  Am I the only one who thinks horses & their poop smells just fine?  My sister & I see someone with a horse, we always ask if we can smell him.  I do have a source for LOTS of horse poop!

Holes in the bottom, lined with weed fabric, filled with MM and maybe some extra rich compost.  Straw mulch when it gets hot to slow evaporation. I love horse manure and use it as a green in my hot compost piles.  I love the smell of horses, also.  I think it is a girl thing.  I got a Morgan when I was 14.

I was raised in Ash Mountain, Three Rivers, and Sequoia National Park (summers).  My father was in charge of the stock used in the back country; next door was Wolverton Pack Station run by the Maloy's.  Wonderful way to spend summers.  People would come up to rent horses and say "Ewww....what's that smell".  We would be "what smell?".  Love it!

I'm going to get a load of manure & run it down the side of my house (not too close) in the back yard, to compost over the winter.  Hope for lots of worms & good stuff to plant sweet potatoes in next year.  It's on the west side so will get lots of sun for them.

I think I'll follow your suggestion & try anyway now.  I file those experiments in the "shoot & holler" file.  I'll let you know what I get.  If nothing else, maybe a few seed potatoes for next year?  Start them for slips in February, right?  

Thanks again!

Summers in Sequoia with horses!  I planted 6 of the fingerlings this spring as an experiment.  Multiple shoots came up so I had to thin them to just 6 for the size of the tote!  Shoot and holler.

PS: Just thinking. You could add some fall leaves in to the manure row.

sanderson wrote:
PS:  Just thinking.  You could add some fall leaves in to the manure row.

 I plan on doing just that.  I have a gardener who does my front yard, but insists on pesticides on the lawn so he doesn't carry my weeds to the next customer.  I understand that, but it's why I am keeping him out of my BACK yard.  No pesticides allowed!  I can, however, rake the leaves before he gets to them....and add them to my pile.  I'm already planning on hitting up the neighbors this fall also.  I hope for lots of leaves!

Mellen, sweet potatoes actually do better in slightly poor soil.  If you get it too nitrogen rich, you'll get loads of vines and small tubers.  My first few experiments went that way.  The containers grew like mad, I had vines everywhere and when I pulled about the container, it was a mass of threads but very few and very small tubers.

Here I am thinking I'm preparing the perfect bed for my sweet potatoes.  I guess I'll go back to the drawing board.  Thanks for the heads up!

I grew sweet potatoes last year by using Trader Joe's organic sweet potatoes cut up in three pieces--keeping three eyes per piece.  I knew nothing about slips last year.  This is what I harvested in November 2015:

Roseinarosecity wrote:I grew sweet potatoes last year by using Trader Joe's organic sweet potatoes cut up in three pieces--keeping three eyes per piece.  I knew nothing about slips last year.  This is what I harvested in November 2015:

Ooo, I LOVE IT!   How long did it take? Do I still have time to grow these for Thanksgiving?

I planted sweet potatoes in a $4.00 container from Wal Mart and also in old coal bucket. My son had some plants left over and gave them to me. Their doing great so far. I had to mulch them with unfinished compost.

OH MY GOSH ROSE!  You planted eyes instead of slips?  Everything I've read says to grow the slips & plant them.  You did yours like regular potatoes, right?  How deep did you plant them? 

I think I'll take mine out of the water and bury them now, then try the slips next year.  What a harvest!

The rest of the photos that have been posted are great.  Totes, coal buckets.  My brother has some oak half barrels he is going to give me.  I was going to use those.

This is FUN!!!  

Hi Rose!  

Melen,  I planted one tote with slips and one tote with SP fingerlings with eyes.  I can't tell the totes apart now unless I dig down to find a fingerling.  Just try it.  You may get a surprise this late fall.

Mellen,
I didn't know about slips, so I planted like a potato.  I probably planted each at 3 inches deep and covered with compost.  I got to see them flower!  It was like a small Morning Glory flower.  I harvested on November 8.  I let them dry out outside for a day, then I brought them indoors until Thanksgiving day.   There was so much info about curing them, but I didn't have the right conditions or patience to cure for months.  I think folks here also said they don't cure like the commercial growers cure.

On Thanksgiving day, we prepared them in a casserole.  They were delicious!

The real reason I wanted to grow sweet potatoes was to eat the leaves, but I was too chicken to try the leaves for fear I bought the wrong sweet potatoes.  Anyone out there eat the sweet potato leaves?

I said I was going to do slips for the next year but that year is now here and I never started for slips.  Since they need 150 days to grow them, we could plant before the month is over and eat them for Christmas.

Good luck!

Hi Rose!
This year is my first time growing sweet potatoes, I just planted slips today. Very sad slips, that I got for free when I intended to purchase them because they were in bad shape. And after I waited a few days, very, very bad shape, and extremely stinky. They hardly have roots, much less leaves.  I read the eating the greens thing, but had forgotten, thanks for the reminder! Guess I'll see what happens. Best case, I need to thin the survivors and have leaves to try. Worst case, I find out whether my preferred place to shop still has some winter squash seedlings to take up the growing space.

Morning glories are in the Ipomoea genus. My loose understanding is the right sweet potatoes would be any Ipomoea batatas (which would be expected to have morning glory like flowers) - and the wrong ones would be yams (Dioscora sp.)  Is this different than your understanding? Your picture looks like Ipomoea batatas and not like Dioscora sp.