They will grow all over. Wait til the plants have died off. If your ground is like mine, be prepared to dig deep.

Nice! I planted them in native soil with a little compost.

I felt like I needed a backhoe to dig mine. That was the last time I planted them.

LOL...............I was eyeballing mine just this morning wondering if I should dig one to see how they're sizing up. I had a wonderful irish potato year and am hoping to repeat the performance with the sweets. Been fighting the varmints with nibbling at the foliage. In my garden, the culprits seem to be ground hogs. I've wanted to rip out some rows of tomatoes who have seen better days, but have left them up since his hole is right near the garden, and as long as he has them to nibble on, he seems to have left most of my pumpkins and melons alone.

My slips arrive in mid to late May and I get them right in the ground then. Beauregards. I use a plow and make raised rows and poke them right in the top and firm the soil around them. Then water daily for a week and as necessary after that. My soil was red clay 10 years ago. I dumped a lot of peat in it first thing. But I haven't bought any more peat since. I do add copious amounts of horse manure yearly in the off season.

I let them go in the ground until the end of September into October if possible. They won't spoil in the ground unless there is a really hard freeze. They just keep getting bigger and bigger. And the big ones are just as good as the little ones. No loss of quality as far as I'm concerned. they're just bigger and have to be cut to manageable size before baking or roasting. I dig them when I see a good dry weekend coming up. Or a spread of good dry days during the week. I bush hog the rows because I have Johnson grass and pigweed. Then run through with a middle buster plow that digs under the sweets and splits the raised row open. I make several passes, picking them up between passes. 3 passes is usually enough.

I buy 200 slips, usually get 300 or more, and will plant as many as I can 2 feet apart on 5 - 100 foot rows. 500 feet of sweets. Two years ago, I had about 10 - 5 gallon buckets full. So I didn't share many. One year ago, I had about 40 - 5 gallon buckets full. I sold half at $5 per bucket and kept the rest. I kept the giants and the gnarly looking ones. They don't fit well in a bucket and I want people to get what they pay for. I didn't eat all I kept before they had to be dumped.

The only difference that I know of was the addition of fresh manure in February or March before planting in May. So I did that again this year. :-) Curious how they did with all the rain. Another month or so I'll find out.

"Will they grow all over the place or just at the base of the plant?" The vines will grow all over, but the tubers will form at the base where the slip was planted. I average 3 or 4 really nice tubers per plant. That means some have 5 or 6 and some only 1 or 2. And there are usually some fingerlings that look more like carrots than potatoes. But they all eat.

Thanks for clarifying. So it would just the same as regular potatoes. They are only at the base of the plant. How do you water so many plants?

They're different from Irish potatoes in that Irish potatoes grow up, so you plant them deep and keep covering them. Sweets grow down, so you plant them high and let them go. That's why I make a hill that's about knee high before I start.

Watering has been a progression from 5 gallon buckets before I lived there hauled in from somewhere else through using larger sturdy Rubbermaid type containers with watering cans to what I have today. I now have a used 500 gallon poly tank (thanks craig's list) on an old military wagon (thanks craig's list) that I haul behind the tractor (thanks craig's list) and walk the rows with a hose. It's on a slight incline, so I get really good pressure for this. I make a cocktail I've mentioned a time or two with fish emulsion, chelated iron, NOG, and a handful of 20 Mule Team Borax. I had a soil test a couple years ago and the micronutrients were lacking. I forgot whether it was manganese or magnesium now. But the chelated iron covers that. If I have to water more than a couple times, the clay crusts over and then I've found that I can jam a piece of rebar into the hill next to the slips and water inside the hill instead of on top and have it run off. yes, I do that for every slip. It really doesn't take as long as it might sound. And it's low impact exercise. Sometimes I'll just jam the end of the hose in the hill and let it set a few seconds on each. This season I made an extension from CPVC so it's sturdy enough to do that and small enough to fill juice bottles for another idea I had. But alas, it has been a wet summer and I haven't tried that yet. I had a water wand attached last year and it froze and snapped last winter. CPVC is cheaper and longer, so less bending. :-)

I've thought about running drip irrigation down the rows and just let it run a few hours every evening after I get them planted, but I haven't done that and it makes it difficult to get the tractor in to cultivate. Sweets are pretty durable and have a strong will to live, so I may never do the drip line. Save that for my tomatoes. :-)

I should have added that I only water to get them going until I start seeing new growth. Then rain keeps them watered. If it doesn't rain in a couple weeks during their first month, they could probably use a drink. But I think I water usually about 4 times and quit. First day, third day, 6th or 7th day then when I see the ground is dry, 10th or 12th day. Then just watch and hope it rains.

This post was edited by chrisb_sc_z7 on Fri, Sep 6, 13 at 14:18