When you start your own sweet potato slips and they fail… all is not lost.  One of our daughters delivered 25 slips of 5 different varieties to us a couple days ago.

Because the cabbage worm invaded my lovely kale (without asking, I might add), I had space for the sweet potatoes. I used a large bag of potting soil to mound the dirt and plant the root sprouts (a.k.a. slips).

Tip: Be sure to keep the weeds at bay around your sweet potatoes; but even more importantly, you don’t want to disturb the tubers while they’re growing, so avoid using a hoe or other tools that may disrupt the feeder roots. Keep them watered weekly, but don’t over water late in the season. This could cause cracking in the tuber’s skin.

Sweet potatoes mature in 90 to 170 days, depending on the variety. You can tell when they’re ready to harvest because the ends of the vines begin to yellow.

After harvesting sweet potatoes, it’s important to cure them. This is what gives them their sweetness. Curing also allows the sweet potatoes to form a second skin over scratches or blemishes that may occur during the digging process.

To cure sweet potatoes, keep them in a warm place (around 80 degree F) with high humidity for 10 to 14 days. A table outside in a shady area works well, and make sure the sweet potatoes are not touching. Once they have been cured, you can store them in a cool place (around 55 degrees F) and they should last about 6 months, or until you eat them.

According to Healthline, sweet potatoes have a ton of benefits. They are highly nutritious and provide a good source of fiber, vitamins and minerals. Furthermore, they promote gut health as well as healthy vision and they may also enhance brain function and support the immune system.

With all the benefits you get from sweet potatoes, they are the perfect root vegetable to grow, harvest and feed your family.

“I know the pleasure of pulling up root vegetables. They are solvable mysteries.” — Novella Carpenter, author of the 2009 memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

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