let there be sweet potatoes: how to plant them

B ETWEEN A ROW OF CUTTING TULIPS AND ANOTHER OF ALLIUMS, on a mounded “ridge” of soil created for the purpose, the sweet potatoes were tucked in here a week ago. You have to love a seed or plant that comes in the mail complete with recipes: how optimistic, how confidence-inspiring. My box of “slips” included all the details on planting, sure, but also on making sweet-potato fries and sweet-potato pie, and I cannot wait. But there are probably just a few details to consider before I fire up the stove:

Unlike white potatoes, where you plant a “seed potato” whose eyes are starting to sprout, with sweet potatoes you start with bits of vine called slips. Glenn Drowns of Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa, who lists more than 100 sweet-potato varieties in his amazing catalog, explains the origin of the word slip:

“A slip is a single plant (with small roots) that is sprouted on the sweet potato root and then slipped off so that you may plant it in the garden to grow a sweet potato plant.”

Each slip doesn’t look like much when it arrives—a piece of vine with some roots and maybe a leaf or two, usually a little pale and worse for the wear after days in transit. But it will quickly rebound if planted promptly according to some basic guidelines (that’s the above-ground bit of one a day or two after planting, above):

The more deep, loose soil you give the plants, the more easily roots (potatoes) will form, and apparently they will also be smoother if not expected to bump into to many obstacles when they grow. Hence the idea of creating a ridge (sort of an elongated hill), but a raised bed would be fine, too, or for that matter any well-cultivated area.

Space the plants 12 inches apart within the row and rows 36 inches apart, because Read more on awaytogarden.com