Edible Gardening Series: Question of the Week – Sweet potatoes

Gardening in Florida can be incredibly rewarding and incredibly frustrating at the same time. If you are new to the region, you soon learn that gardening in the sunshine state can quickly become a full-time job. Our subtropical climate is perfect for growing an abundance of different vegetables, fruits, and herbs, but the challenges can sometimes be a bit overwhelming.

This is where we can help! Agents from UF/IFAS Extension Sarasota County have partnered to offer a weekly, 30-minute workshop on Zoom to help answer your gardening questions. The first 10 minutes offers an educational component relevant to the urban gardener. The remainder of the time is dedicated to question and answer – any question you have! The series runs through March 2021 with the exception of holidays. You must register for the series on Eventbrite to receive the link to the series. You only need to register once to get access to the entire series:

Edible Gardening Series

Every week, the agents will post a question from the webinar that we are sure will be helpful for our community gardeners at large.

This week’s Question of the Week:

I really want to grow sweet potatoes, but I’m not sure how to start. What do I need to know?

If you have never grown a sweet potato, add it to your list of easily achievable New Year’s resolutions! Edible gardening in Florida can be incredibly challenging. Growing sweet potatoes is not.

Let’s start with the benefits of growing sweet potatoes in Florida and other hot, humid regions:

Sweet potatoes grow best during the summer when it is too hot for almost any other common edible plants.
Sweet potato plants are beautiful! They are a sprawling tangle of green and purple leaves and vines that cover the soil like a blanket.
Their ability to cover the ground like a blanket means that they are an edible ground cover or living mulch, which protects your soil from harsh summer sun and erosion-inducing rain.
When you dig your sweet potatoes up in late summer or early fall, the thick foliage can be added to your compost pile, mowed and tilled into the soil, or used to mulch your next crop. All of that beautiful foliage is pure organic matter!
Field of sweet potatoes and freshly harvested tubers. [Image by Chang Min SHIN from Pixabay.]
Sweet potato leaves are EDIBLE!! And not only edible, but delicious and nutritious. They are very commonly eaten by cultures around the world. Do an internet search for “sweet potato greens recipes” and thousands of recipes from around the world will pop up.
Sweet potatoes thrive in nutrient-poor, sandy soil. It’s true.
Sweet potatoes do not typically need to be watered in Florida. The amount of rain we receive during the summer in Florida is usually the right amount. If you live somewhere that is dry during the hot months of the year, you will need to do some supplemental watering.
Sweet potatoes need very little fertilizer compared to other garden veggies.
Most pests leave sweet potatoes alone. That means that you can leave the pesticides on the shelf and let beneficial insects do the job of taking care of your plants.
By growing sweet potatoes in your garden during the summer, you will have an edible harvest from your Florida garden year-round.

So, how to get started?

Read this concise and very helpful tutorial on growing sweet potatoes in Florida: https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/vegetables/sweet-potatoes.html
This sweet potato is sprouting. The sprouts are removed and encouraged to develop roots. These rooted sprouts are called “slips”. [Image by Nikki Ovadia from Pixabay]
Pre-order sweet potato “slips” at least a couple of months before you plan to plant them. Sweet potatoes are not planted from seeds. They are planted from “slips”, which are a sprouted cutting from a mature sweet potato tuber that is then coaxed into making a root system.
- Although you can grow your own slips, the only way to be sure that you are starting with disease-free plants is to purchase your slips from a reputable company that sells certified pest and disease-free slips
Plant your sweet potato slips in April, May, or June. Many seed companies and specialty sweet potato growers sell slips. They will arrive in your mailbox in special packaging to keep them alive and healthy, but you will need to plant them asap after receiving them!
When your sweet potatoes are ready to harvest, plan to “cure” them for a few weeks in a dark, hot place. This curing process gives the sweet potatoes time to convert some of their starch over to sugar – this is the part of the process that makes sweet potatoes sweet!