Learning how to plant sweet potatoes can be a very rewarding experience to growers. To grow sweet potatoes, you only need common garden tools and materials. However, it is important to understand that sweet potatoes don't grow from seeds. They grow from root sprouts or slips. For this reason, if you wan grow sweet potatoes from your own slips, you will need untreated sweet potatoes.

About 6 weeks prior to transplanting, you need to place the slips or root sprouts inside a box with sawdust, moist sand or dead leaves. Then keep this at around 80 degrees F. Once the slips grow to over 6 inches in length, you can cut and prepare them for planting already. Make sure you don't dispose the bottom inches from every slip as doing so can harbor harmful microbes.

Find a location site where you can plant sweet potatoes with ease. Keep in mind that sweet potatoes adore warm weather and they cannot tolerate the cold. This means, a good site to grow sweet potatoes are places with temperatures ranging from 75 degrees F onwards. The best sites for growing are areas with no frost or cold weathers such as tropical countries. Furthermore, sweet potatoes grow better in sandy soils.

Once you find a suitable location to plant sweet potatoes, you need to prepare the site. You can plant them on flat grounds or dug mounds. Just clear the site for growing throughout the dry season. Growing plants that can add fertility to the soil is also good. You can also put some rubbish there and leave to rot for about a month prior to planting. You can then plow on it to soften the soil.

When planting, put the slips about one foot apart inside holes about •½ foot deep. These slips need to be completely buried excluding the top leaves.
You don't need to water sweet potatoes all the time. In fact, once a week is just fine but make sure you don't water them about 2 weeks prior to harvest time. This prevents the rotting of the roots.

Once you plant sweet potatoes, they only need minimal care to grow. They don't need much fertilizer. It's only during their younger days that you need to surround them with black mulch. This will help retain moisture for the slips. Furthermore, black mulch can help absorb heat coming from the sun.

When growing sweet potatoes, there's no particular season to watch out for. They can grow throughout the year, especially if the environment I frost-free and warm. Then, in a span of 4 to 5 mons. you'll be able to harvest deliciously sweet potatoes.

The best time for harvest is after its leaves start to turn yellowish and before the frost sets in. After you harvest them, place them to dry under the sun for several hours. Afterwards, you can store them inside a warm room for curing for about 10 to 14 days. When they're already cured, you can store them at a place with temperatures less then 60 degrees F along with an 80% humidity level.