About Sweet Potatoes

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Scrumptious sweet potato scallops

Most sweet potatoes have reddish tan skins and creamy yellow to deep orange flesh and are classified as "moist" or "dry," terms that describe the eating texture of the flesh. Moist, deep orange types—like the soft-fleshed, sugary, good-storing Porto Rico (150 days)-are sometimes called "yams" because of their resemblance to the true yam ( Dioscorea alata or D. sativa ), an African plant that can be raised only in tropical climates.

How to Grow Sweet potatoes are grown from slips—sprouts taken from the tubers. While sweet potato slips can be purchased from nurseries, seed houses and garden supply stores, it's easy to propagate them yourself. First, locate some tubers that haven't been treated or waxed to prevent sprouting. Then, some six to eight weeks before planting time, half bury them in a pan or box of rooting medium (moist sand, sawdust or chopped leaves will do) or suspend a potato with toothpicks halfway into a water-filled jar. To be successful, keep these potato parents moist and at a temperature between 75° and 80° F. (The Japanese use the warmth of miniature compost heaps to start potato slips.) Approximately a month later, the first shoots will appear. When they're about six to nine inches long, cut them from the parent potato and remove and dispose of the bottom inch from each slip, because this particular segment sometimes harbors disease organisms.

Sweet potatoes will grow in poor soil that won't sustain most other vegetables, but yields from such plots will be sparse. Ideally, they do best in a well-drained sandy loam with a clay or clay-loam subsoil. Heavy clay, unless well-worked, produces misshapen roots, while a too-light soil creates long, stringy tubers.

Prepare the sweet potato bed in a full-sun area around the time of the last spring frost, digging the ground to a depth of eight to 12 inches in order to allow the tubers' long roots to make use of moisture deep in the earth. To further provide the loose soil so essential to good tuber development, most gardeners prefer to plant in long, wide ridges that are at least 10 inches high. Rows are generally spaced around three-and-a-half feet apart. (A 10-foot row will produce four to eight pounds of potatoes.) Remove all deformity causing rocks and dirt clods, and work in average amounts of compost and wood ashes or rock phosphate. Potassium-rich materials will help the potatoes fill out properly, but, unless you're planting in very sandy soil, go easy with manure or other nitrogen-rich fertilizers that will encourage lush vines, stunt tuber development, and combined with excessive rainfall-can delay maturation. Sweet potatoes like a slightly-to-moderately acid soil (pH 5.2 to 6.7), which also discourages soilborne diseases that can mar tuber skins.

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