Ways I have Grown Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes don’t grow from seed. They grow from slips that are rooted and then planted in the ground.

Tire Grown Sweet Potatoes

The first time I grew sweet potatoes, I purchased the slips from a local greenhouse where I also bought my other garden plants. I don’t know where I got the idea, but I figured that growing the sweet potatoes in tires was good idea. I put dirt in one automobile tire then the second and planted the slip in that top tire.

I wasn’t worried about the chemicals in the tires because the sweet potatoes weren’t in the tires for years, just a few months so any chemicals leaching out into the sweet potatoes was minimal at best.

The vine grew like crazy, totally camouflaging the tires. When it came to harvesting the sweet potatoes, all I had to do was kick off the top tire and pick up the sweet potatoes. Nothing could be simpler.

Raised Bed Grown Sweet Potatoes

I was a little disappointed with the number of sweet potatoes produced in the tires. That’s why the next year I planted the sweet potato slips in a raised bed. Again, the sweet potato vines were everywhere and overran the entire bed. This time though, I harvested a couple five gallon buckets of sweet potatoes. Now we were talking.

Except, the next year the greenhouse didn’t have any more potato slips, and then I moved into the city for a number of years.