farmerdill, How do you rate the Carolina Ruby and the Covington. I understand the Covington are very good. What would you grow if only growing one verity? How do you compare Carolina Ruby & Covington with Beauregard? Some people don't like Beauregard and others do. Are Beauregard the ones sold in grocery stores? I have been thinking about planting Covington but can't decide. The last few years I have been growing my slips from grocery store sweet potato's. The reason for that is the gophers are so bad here some years I am lucky if I get any at all so grocery store sweet potato slips are cheaper than loosing more expensive slips ordered from a farm some where.

RcWeston, Your sweet potato must come from a variety with purple foliage. There are quite a few. They're beautiful and practical. I have started slips from grocery store sweet potatoes. Not every one will do. But usually, out of several, by this time of the year, there is one with little sprouts starting to form. Also, it's often possible to get one to start sprouting by keeping it warm and exposing it to light and moisture. The sweet potatoes produced from such slips are usually quite good. Here's a link to a simple guide I did, for sweet potatoes. George Tahlequah, OK Here is a link that might be useful: Starting & Saving Your Own Sweet Potatoes

Well, first thing I need to say is that sweet 'taters are totally different plants from potatoes. That's the sad news. The other news is, I can tell you how they grow based on "up close and personal" experience: When I was a child, my mother would (rarely) find a sprouting sweet potato in the bottom of a bin. She'd poke 3 holes around the "equator" and push in 3 toothpicks. Then she'd prop that puppy up in a narrow glass partly filled with water. She always set it in a kitchen window, right by the sink (where I did dishes). The sturdy vine grew from the top point, and the roots grew from the root point area (aka, the "wet zone"). The sweet potato vine grew rapidly, using its stored sugars for energy. Other stuff, also using the root's sugars, grew even faster, until it used up all the oxygen in the narrow water glass. Soon, the aroma of anaerobic decomposition would begin to profoundly affect my dishwashing experience. 8-p After it stank enough, she'd throw the science project away and scrub out the glass--and scrub, and scrub. (Yes, I had to get my compost-pile training from strangers. With therapy, I am slowly recovering from that early deprivation....) ;-D So if you want to grow "science experiments," be sure to grow sweet potatoes in wet conditions. If you would rather grow food, you need certified disease-free sweet potato "slips" (or your own s.p. roots and a sandy "hotbed" + 6-8 weeks to grow out your own slips), a wide, flat, well-drained raised bed (at least 8 inches high x 12 inces wide), mulched--and a long, hot, dry growing season. I expect you can trellis the vines. I haven't grown a food crop, but you can probably grow them 1/1 (one per squarefoot)--or even 2/3 (2 per 3 squares in a line). They can't be hard--I even got a small crop the other year from a patch of decorative ("nonproductive") sweet potato vines, but of course I didn't eat them--the plants were not grown for food. No telling what chemicals the growers used on them. The key conditions for sweet potato success are: * Raised * Long season * Hot * Dry My decorative vines were planted by my garden's irrigation trench ("raised" 8 inches above the drainage floor), and they got minimal water in a long, hot East Texas summer. Therefore, they "produced." I like the site I'm linking to--the University of Illinois. I think their instincts are right, even though they are still "row farming" a lot. "Watch Your Garden Grow" is *such* a Squarefoot-philosophy for a garden site title..... ;-) Here is a link that might be useful: Sweet Potato Culture

None that I know about. The plants are not related and don't seem to share any diseases