Harvesting – You can harvest sweet potatoes after four to five months, once the leaves turn yellow and die back in late summer or autumn, before any frosts. Lift them carefully to avoid bruising the fresh tubers, which have delicate skin. Any damaged tubers should be used straight away. Sweet potatoes tubers can be boiled, roasted or made into chips. They are best used fresh, as they are hard to store successfully. They freeze well if blanched or boiled beforehand. The shoots and leaves can also be cooked like spinach.
When is the best time to plant sweet potatoes?
You can also create your own slips to plant in the spring. In November (this is when the best of the new harvest will be out), go to your supermarket and look for unblemished and uncracked medium-size sweet potatoes. One sweet potato should yield about 12 plants.
How do you plant and care for sweet potatoes?
Here’s how to plant, care for, and harvest sweet potatoes! A large, naturally sweet-tasting root of the morning glory family (not related to potatoes), sweet potatoes are a very undemanding crop to grow as long as you have sun and warm soil; this is a tropical plant. Sweet potatoes are drought- and heat-tolerant and have few pests or diseases.