We already talked about how to make a grow bag for potatoes. Today’s topic is making a grow bag for and planting sweet potatoes. This is the first year that I am growing sweet potatoes in a grow bag so I don’t damage them when harvesting.  Instead of digging them out,  I will gently dump the dirt and harvest the sweet potatoes.
I used premium landscaping fabric that was good for more than one year. Â I cut two 19″ circles and two rectangles that were 18″ tall x 59″ wide for each grow bag so it would be double thick. Â I sewed the sides that were 18″ together and then sewed the tube to the circles. Â Next I filled the bags with garden soil and planted the sweet potatoes at the beginning of June.
Another reason I am growing the sweet potatoes in a grow bag is so the plant is closer to the fence line.  I want to grow the vines vertically up the fence.  The vines get pretty flowers but the downside is that they will take over the garden! So we are going vertical this year.
I ended up with one good sweet potato slip which I grew from a scrap (see the prior blogs on sweet potatoes).  I bought the rest from a local nursery and planted them at the beginning of June.  While potatoes can tolerate cooler weather, sweet potatoes like the warm temperatures of June.  The annoying thing about buying them locally and growing them from scraps is that I have no idea what kind of sweet potatoes I am growing because they were just marked as “sweet potatoes”.  I previously told you that burpee.com has a good selection of sweet potato plants but no variety packs.  I finally found a company, Steele Plant Company LLC (www.sweetpotatoplant.com) that sells a sweet potatoe mixed dozen which consists of four plant of three varieties for $19.75.  I think I am going to give it a try next year.
