Roots & tubers
Sweet potatoes
The summer bench crop; slips mid Apr to mid May.
- Outside
- Plant slips mid Apr to mid May
- Where
- In ground or raised bed, hottest spot
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Daily till rooted, then deep weekly soaks
- Harvest
- Oct to Nov, ahead of frost
Care
- Water
- Water the slips daily for about two weeks while they root out, then taper to a deep soak about weekly. Established vines carry the heat that ends other crops, the county's summer bench, and they mind dry stretches far more than they mind the heat.
- Sow
- Not seed: slips, the rooted cuttings the trade sells. Set them out mid-April to mid-May, once the soil is thoroughly warm, the county's 65F class for sweet potatoes. The statewide table marks fall planting not recommended, so this one window is the year's whole crop.
- Feed
- A shovel of compost worked into the bed at planting is the whole program. Skip extra nitrogen, which grows vines at the expense of the roots, and let the plants run.
- Ready
- Dig the whole crop ahead of the mid-November frost, once the nights have cooled. Lift gently; fresh-dug skins scrape and bruise easily, so ease them out with a fork and set bruised or cut roots aside to eat first. This is the fall-and-holiday crop.
- Trouble
- The failure mode is the calendar: slips set into soil that is not warm yet sit and sulk, and a planting that slips past May runs out of season before the roots size. After that the vines are the easiest crop on the summer bench; heat that stalls the beans is this crop's engine.
In a bag?
- No
- Sweet potatoes are not container crops in any Texas source surveyed, and the 15 gallon cap settles it before the sprawl does: a happy vine runs well past a patio footprint. A bed in the hottest corner is the whole assignment.
Sweet potato is the crop this climate was made for: slips go into warm April soil and the vines ride the summer heat that stalls everything else.
Growing
The state sheet's own climate line says it: hot days and warm nights are ideal for sweet potatoes, which is why Texas grows them commercially. Slips go in once the soil is thoroughly warm, mid-April to mid-May here, and the vines spend the summer covering the bed while the fruiting crops pause through the gap. The crop digs before the November 15 frost; there is no second window, since the statewide table marks fall planting not recommended. Give them the hottest corner of the garden and let them sprawl.
Varieties
The state sheet names Beauregard, Centennial, Jewell and Vardaman as the varieties common in Texas, with Beauregard the most planted. Any of them is the right slip here.
In the kitchen
The fall-and-holiday crop: roasted whole, mashed with butter, baked into the holiday pies. Cubed into the black-eyed pea pot alongside the cowpeas, or slicked with oil and charred for tacos, they carry the kitchen from October's dig straight through winter.