Gardening 101: Sweet Potatoes - First year experiment!

Sweet Potatoes: What is not to love about this root? This is my first year growing sweet potatoes, so this will be our experiment. I did not even have them on my plan for this year, but I went to my garden center looking for herbs and there they were - the last tray of sweet potatoes! so I could not resist.

I did some research on the internet and discovered the little plants are some sort of climbers, and nope! they are not really a potato!! There are also a hot crop, so do not plant if frost or cold temperatures are still in your horizon. I reassigned some space in my vegetable garden beds and planted them. So let's see how it goes.

Here is what I did:

Choose a place close to a wall or where you can put a trellis. I am going to start with a short metal one as I have no idea how tall these plants are.

I am planting one plant per square foot, just in case they grow wide. I have a row of three to start with. Make a hole as big as the sweet potato plant root ball. Put some vermicompost at the bottom (What is vermicompost? click here) of the hole and plant your sweet potato.

Put your trellis at the back making sure you do not disturb the roots of the sweet potatoes. Water and wait.

I will be monitoring their growth and let you know if the sweet potato experiment works.