If you want a compact sweet potato, Amish Bush Porto Rico does pretty well. It is a variant of the old Porto Rico. My personal favorite is Bradshaw aka Mahon. It is a a very good general purpose sweet potato that produces a good crop even in short season areas. Most important, they are much better flavored and have better texture than Georgia Jet. I've also had very good results with Covington which is a recent release that produces much higher quality sweet potatoes than industry standards like Beauregard. Sandhill's business is first come first serve. This is why it is important to order early. It is not a matter of being on a waiting list, you will be on a waiting list if you order from virtually any sweet potato supplier. Get your order in early and Sandhill will almost always ship slips in a 2 week window timed for your location. Mahon is also available from Johnny's this year so if you are ordering from them, consider getting sweet potato plants too.

Agreed. I just planted sweet potatoes a couple weeks ago. I was a little bit late but hope to be okay. Hot peppers or sweet? I have no familiarity with sweet but the hot peppers should grow all through summer, they need water of course, and will produce in fall/winter. Last year Christmas time I had lots of hot peppers on all my plants. Also agree to give up the ghost on the tomatoes. It's a lot of work to keep them alive and they don't do well. Start over in late summer by either beginning them from seed indoors or I may try direct sow this year so they begin to come up when air temps begin coming down. Bottom line: it's all just a crap shoot! ;-)

Hi - Sorry for late response. Had an unexpected medical issue in my family on Tuesday, got back last night. Larry - good grief - what a photo!! I had no idea. I believe I could get all the slips I need from two good sized potatoes. I'd do that but I want to grow several varieties - a few that did especially well last year, and a few that underperformed that I'd like to try again. Dawn, Pete agrees that I need to get my head examined! I've been relying on what I read, not on personal experience, so I'm limited. I read a post by Farmerdill that he starts planting sweet potatoes in early May and continues into June. His weather is similar to ours re: temps. I don't know how long it takes for sweets to make slips, so decided I'd probably be on safe ground if I started them in late March. The potatoes in the photo don't appear to have changed since I posted that photo and questions last week. Maybe they are smarter than me, know we are still running at least 20 degrees below average - highs and lows. The cool temps will continue this week, at a minimum. I think you're right about a cool April. On the rare occasions that we have sunshine, I put everyone out on the deck, keep an eye on the wind. I've given them a couple of light doses of fertilizer. Some of the Feb started peppers are looking better, but the tomatoes are very leggy. I'm thinking about whether I need to repot them in deeper containers. Planted a lot of seedlings, so the thought of repotting them is daunting. Maybe I'll just repot the leggy ones. George: First, thanks for the info re: abundant slips. I didn't know what to expect. Doesn't sound like a shortage of slips is a common problem. I'm not very familiar with diseases of sweet potatoes yet. Are fungus gnats a common problem in your area? It sounds like you have a solution to that problem, but the gnarly roots are caused by something else. My sweet potatoes looked pretty good when I harvested them, but a fair percentage developed what appear to be fungus-related problems. I think scurf and black rot. Some shriveled up - I threw them away, did not compost them. When I researched sweet potato diseases, the number of fungus related problems was sobering. The solution to most fungus-related problems is crop rotation and planting "disease-free roots treated with fungicides." I don't have more available land - this was the first time anyone grew sweet potatoes or anything else on this land. Guess I need to learn how to treat roots with fungicides. You have gnarly roots, I have funguses (fungi?). It's always something. Our vegetable gardens will keep us sober or drive us to drink! Take care, Pam

We didn't have drought as I watered when it didn't rain. I thought they loved hotness but you may be right about the heat causing the tubers to fail. Also, read about them failing because of a lack of phosphorus and I know we were on the low side. I think I will try hills this year and just use some from the grocer which buys locally and ammend beforehand to make sure the soil is just as they would like! Oh, and they also said too much loam could cause them to fail. I also had them planted in with pepper plants. Maybe they don't like peppers...hhmmmm?