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This issue of Mother Earth magazine had a great article on growing sweet potatoes, even in the North. I never considered it before, but do believe I'm going to try to grow some next year.

Does anyone here grow them? It didn't say when to harvest. It did say the vines were edible. Anyone eat them?

I'm growing some for the 2nd year in a row. We harvested them at about 4 months after planting them. It takes a long time it seems. But we did get some nice big ones.

I don't remember how we knew it was time to harvest--in fact I don't think we knew. We harvested the end of September or first of October before the weather got cold.

However I had trouble with wireworms last year so this year I planted mine with a dusting of diazinon--nasty stuff but I felt I had no choice. We plant all our potatoes with this stuff - we have wireworms in the soil. Too bad.

I think sweet potatoes are really easy to grow. They don't like a lot of water. So I ended up watering once a week, letting it dry out inbetween. I've heard you can hardly kill a sweet potato vine....lol

Also you need a big area to grow them--the vines get pretty long. I've never heard of eating the vines though...lol.

I weeded until the vines took over and they kept the weeds down themselves. Other than that, I had no trouble growing them. They were easy.

Thank you Lee Anne. The four months is fairly normal for large items, so that doesn't bother me. Darn if I had started the slips I could put them now and they'd still make it.

I have a ton of rolly polly's in the garden. I'm not even sure what their real name is. They look like a armadella.

ok my friends in the garden all over the place are pill bugs. I am wondering if they are so heavy because it's the oldest garden, and I've been trying to clean out the old bulbs in there and roots. They eat dead matter from plants.

It makes me wonder if I shouldn't put some of the guys in the composter. They like dark and moist.

You would dig your sweet potatoes about the time of your first frost. Also, you can keep the vines cut back to six feet or so so that they don't take over your garden.

Perla

Thanks Perla, I didn't know you could cut the vines back. That's good to know, otherwise they take over the garden.

Faith, I know very little about pill bugs. I always see a few in my garden, but not that much.

That you Perla. I am glad to hear it's ok to cut the vines back.

Now I'm curious. What sort of soil do sweet potatoes like? They like it dry? I'll have to look them up. I wonder if its too late to plant them now. I just had an entire plot open up and though a lot of the soil seems woody on top I bet under that its great. I cant imagine having an entire crop of sweet potatoes. That's too good to be true!

I'm not sure how long it takes to get them to sprout and make slips. I was thinking on trying it too, but was afraid by the time slips were ready that it would be too late.

I just planted the sweetpotatoes Faith. I didn't wait for them to sprout although I think most were sprouting. They are just starting to come up.

StarchBeet: As far as I know, they do like sandy soil--good drainage. But do look it up because I am certainly not an expert.

We bought a sweet potato plant at the store one day when they had a sale. It's not doing great, but maybe the nights have been too cool? They are a tropical plant so we're hoping it will do better as the temps keep shooting up. There's also a volunteer squash seedling in the pot. I guess my compost wasn't quite as "finished" as I thought, especially since there's also a volunteer squash growing in with one of the grapes we planted recently. LOL

wow I think I'm going to do it. We stay warm enough through Sept and I have warming plastic for Oct if it gets too cool.

Chilie doesn't your soil hold the heat of the day? Maybe not since it's pots. I wonder if the sweet potatoes would do well in the hugerkulture bed. They don't go too deep from what I've heard.

The article said no temps below 50, and to plant when soil is 70 degrees.

I'm sure the soil is warmer in the pots than in the ground. Because we used aged horse manure in the hugerkultur beds, I was hesitant to put any root vegs in them. I wanted to work the remaining manure pile more to actually compost it but have been too restricted from injuries and the heat to go out there and shovel a ton of manure!

well I am sure this isn't going to work, but the fun thing about gardening is playing. It is also gambling sometimes with Mother Nature who usually wins. I am stubborn and like to play though. So I took ends of a garnet sweet potato and am starting to try and slip them. I do have some of the plastic for heating if I need to extend the warmth a bit later.

I am just so curious, and I figure Hey maybe it'll daze and confuse the bugs.