Sweet Potato Advice Please...

Hi all,
I love sweet potatoes and so decided if I could get one to grow in my garden. Being a complete novice I bought one off the shelf in Tesco and popped it as it was into the airing cupboard last December. By March it had started to sprout so I bought a potato grow bag, popped it in and filled it up with soil. This I then placed outdoors in my flower bed in a good sunny spot. I water it regular and read somewhere that it liked tomato food so now and again I put in a quarter cap with the water. Now (July) the plant has gone into orbit - lots of strong shoots and leaves coming out of the top of the bag. What I'm wondering is, is there anything else I should be doing for it and when I should be thinking of opening up the bag to see what's been growing there. Any advice would be more than appreciated.
p.s. we're in West Sussex so apart from the rain earlier in the year we've had loads of sun. I guess that makes a big difference ?

 

Hi eric. I grew sweet potatoes for the first time last year, so I have some limited experience.

I'd say just keep watering and feeding them for now, if they're putting out plenty of strong, green growth then that's good. Once they get going they do put on a lot of top growth quite quickly.

They do need a whole summer of growing to produce any decent sized tubers though, so leave it until late September, or even October if the weather stays fine before you delve into the grow bag and see what you've got. Good luck!

 

Hi, thanks for the advice. It's definitely putting out lots of green growth which looks very healthy so if I'm doing the right thing then that's great. Just got to hope that this recent patch of good weather doesn't turn out to have been summer and that the wet stuff will return indefinitely. I will post pictures of the finished product hopefully in the autumn.
Out of interest do you think I may have had the same result if I had planted straight into the earth. We have a very clay soil down here which doesn't help a lot of tuber type plants at all.

 

Not sure how they'd grow in a clay soil, my soil is very sandy and free draining here.
I do know they need to be kept well watered for best results though.
Maybe someone else on here has tried growing them in clay soil, they're a helpful and knowledgeable bunch so keep watching.

 

Will do, thanks. I shall take your advice and let you know in due course.

 

I reckon what they need, primarily, is heat. I've only ever grown them in the greenhouse. In a good summer you'll probably be fine, whatever, but in mediocre / poor summers they'll need all the help they can get

 

Forgive my ignorance but I thought sweet potatoes grew on a vine as apposed to tubers in the ground???
I do have a plant growing in my polly tunnel

 

The grow like a vine, but the sweet potatoes form under ground.