Sweet Potato

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a tender perennial vine in the Convolvulaceae (morning glory) family, grown as an annual crop for its enlarged storage roots. Despite the name, it is botanically unrelated to the true potato.

It is a heat-loving plant that produces long, trailing vines and needs a long, warm growing season. The harvested part is the swollen root, not a tuber, with flesh in colors of orange, white, purple, or yellow.

Sweet potatoes are propagated from rooted shoots called slips rather than seed.

Sweet potato is a vigorous trailing vine with heart-shaped or lobed leaves.

• Leaves: Heart-shaped or deeply lobed, green to purple, on long trailing stems
• Habit: Sprawling groundcover vine, several feet long, rooting at nodes
• Flowers: Funnel-shaped, pale pink to lavender, like a morning glory (often sparse)
• Roots: Swollen storage roots with smooth skin in orange, red, purple, or tan
• Propagation unit: Slips, the sprouts grown from a parent root

Sweet potato is easy where summers are warm and long.

• Light: Full sun
• Water: Moderate and even; reduce watering late in the season as roots mature
• Soil: Loose, sandy, well-draining soil; rich but not heavily nitrogen-fed; pH 5.5 to 6.5
• Temperature: Warm-season; loves 75 to 90 F and is very frost-sensitive
• Feeding: Light; excess nitrogen grows vines at the expense of roots
• Propagation: Plant slips after the soil warms. Harvest before frost, then cure the roots in warmth and humidity to toughen the skin for storage.

Sweet potato is native to tropical Central and South America, where it was domesticated thousands of years ago. Remarkably, it spread across the Pacific to Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.

It is now a widely grown crop throughout the tropics, subtropics, and warm-temperate regions, with large production in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It is grown both in fields and in home gardens with long, hot summers.