not likely if the plants have died back to the ground. Sweet potatos are perennials in warm climates. The potaoes will rot in cold ground (below 50 degrees). Even if they could make it, the sprouts would require thinning and resetting.
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I should clarify that after rechecking the bed I see that half the leafless stems are green, it never freezes here (I live in citrus country) so I'm pretty sure some of the bed will survive the winter. Yes, I figured there would be a clumping problem eventually, but since this bed overproduced dramatically (kind of like those onion beds that end up filling your house and all your friends) I wouldn't mind if it scaled back production due to crowding. This won't become one of those onion type beds that keeps growing from the energy stored in the underground tubers, they'll all just rot instead?

if you are in an area that never freezes, then they will behave as perennials. The problem with this is that the bed will become more and more unproductive until after about 3 years they will not produce anything. If you want to eat sweet potatoes, then you will need to periodically renew the bed and replant. Also, diseases build up in the soil where sweet potatoes grow. This means you should move them to a new bed after 2 or 3 growing seasons.

I won't grow Beauregard. It is a relatively flavorless variety. Mahon and Covington are better sweetpotatoes. Also, given your climate, you could easily grow Okinawan.

DarJones

Hi DarJones, Is Okinawan the best tasting sweet potato in your opinion? Can you describe it? Yes, I'm trying to be lazy and skip digging up the bed this year, I won't keep growing it past this coming season, I'd love to hear about a knockout replacement. Any thoughts from other sweet potato growers here?

Here is a sampler of sweetpotato varieties.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures of current varieties

Tastes varys from person to person. So what I may think is the bees knees, may to you be yucky. I prefer the moist orange fleshed types: Port Rico, Jewel, Covington, Hernandez, Carolina Ruby, Centennial etc. I find the yellow fleshed and white fleshed varieties too dry for my liking. While most of the purple fleshed varieties are also dry, Okinawan is described as moist but I have not tried it. Some of the older varieties like Oakleaf, Willow leaf, Carver are good for my taste, if slightly less productive tha newer varieties. In order of personal preference:
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Farmerdill, Covington should be pink skinned, not bronze. Is your label incorrect?

Okinawan may be called a moist flesh variety but in my experience, it is dry. If you are making a sweet potato casserole or a sweet potato pie, then it is outstanding. I would not ordinarily eat it as a baked sweet potato. It is even used to make purple sweet potato ice cream.

Some of the varieties I've enjoyed the most include Golden Nugget, Jewel, Mahon (aka Bradshaw). I've eaten Covington and think it is an excellent variety but have not yet grown it. I have Covington roots ready to grow slips so barring incident, I will see how it performs this summer. I am also growing Hannah Gold, Mahon, and Okinawan.

Sweetpotatoes are arguably the most productive plant you can grow in terms of edible calories of food per acre. They are also drought tolerant and heat tolerant. When harvested, the vines can be fed to cattle to make them fat.

DarJones

Yes, Skin color does vary with conditions, but no variety comes out pink under my conditions. They do have a reddish tinge. The N C State description and colors are pretty accurate. Actually Carolina Ruby ( second photo) did even better this past year but it was the first trial. Grown Covington two years. This year they had a much better shape than last year. George's Plant farms and Steele are not listing Covington this year, but I start my own beds and buy an experimental variety each year. If I like I will keep it and drop one of the older ones. I normally only grow 4 varieties per year.
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Here is a link that might be useful: Covington Sweet potato

Ditto, Okinowan is supposed to be sweet and moist but I find it too dry. It's very popular among Chinese or Japanese communities, and can usually be found in Asian markets. I know many people cook them with rice, maybe the steaming method helps.

Dar, regarding your statement about feeding the vines to cattle, someday I expect to keep a dairy cow on impoverished florida sand, and am thinking of SP foliage as one of the ways to create higher-quality forage. Along with legumes adapted to poor soils.

I like Beauregards. I've tried others. Had 4 or 5 varieties one year and I couldn't really tell the difference. And when I'd bring them in to work to folks to buy (cheap) they didn't care which were which. They just wanted sweetpotatoes. Since I can get the slips relatively cheaply, I don't bother with other varieties anymore and have hit and miss luck with them from year to year. 2011, I might have dug 10 five gallon buckets total with lots of the fingerling size and long slender misshapen tubers as well. 2012 was totally different. I sold 20 five gallon buckets full of nice size tubers and I had another 10 or so left for myself. But I had rabbit trouble this year, so they're not as nice as they could be without the chew marks. I ask for 200 slips and get 300 because of the way they are counted. I don't complain.

I would think if you plan to eat them, you need to dig up the tubers now and replant the smaller ones since you are in a frost free area. Since they cluster under the ground, I can't see them being good for eating past the first year. I'd like to see what the clustering looks like after two years with new tubers and older tubers together.

Farmerdill, I love your photo of the basket full of Beauregard potatoes. Would you be okay with me using it on this page?

Here is a link that might be useful: Beauregard Sweet Potato

I have no Objection

Hi Chris, So I dig them all up, and put the fingerling ones back in the bed. I don't need slips this year because the tubers take their place, right? I can do this every season indefinitely or should I go back to slips eventually? Thanks everyone for your opinions, I'm planning for the most part to eat them baked. Some of you said you don't like the taste of Beauregards but they are perfect when baked, at least to me. The consensus seems to be Okinowans are too dry when used this way. For those who prefer a different baked variety, I'd love to hear which one/ones it is, I always like trying new flavors, thx.

I recently did a taste test of some sweet potatoes to determine which ones to grow. We baked them and taste tested them side by side. I suggest you do the same so you know what appeals to you. I agree that the Okinowans were dry but compared to them, I found that some of the other sweet potatoes were too wet. I actually really like the dry texture of the Okinowans. It was the texture of a good baked potato. I also think they have a lot more flavor than some of the other sweet potatoes. If you are looking for a moister purple sweet potato, the Stokes sweet potato is very moist. I personally have found that the purple sweet potatoes have more flavor than the other colors.

I have a question for you if you don't harvest your sweet potatoes why do you plant them from the first place. I love sweet potatoes however mine did not do too well. I think my soil is very sticky. I am thinking to ament the soil in sweet potatoes bed with some sand.

Flora, I assume without much frost or heavy freezes, any tubers you leave or put back in the ground would be fine to overwinter. Or you could simply store them inside until you would normally plant new slips. I usually get new slips every year, but I'm used to doing that and not starting my own, so that's what I do. But if my source gets expensive on me, then I will look at doing my own.

My point about digging them up anyway was that you can't tell what's in the ground now if you don't look. Some of my plants yielded several very large tubers that were jammed right next to each other in clusters. We're talking quart jar size, three or four at a time. Many clusters like this were found. If those were left to overwinter and keep on growing next year unchecked, I'm not sure what the result might be. And any of the big boys that were left would probably not be good to eat after an extra year in the ground. Maybe they would. But I doubt it. I figure it's more likely that they would freeze and turn to mush around here.

But I do believe fingerlings would do something because I toss some willy nilly in other parts of the garden when harvesting and I end up with volunteer vines growing where they shouldn't be the next year.

I have a friend at work that bought some of my tubers several years ago now and they continue to propagate their own slips from those and their children.

I'm happy buying new slips because the guy I get them from drives to somewhere in NC every May and gets thousands of them at a time and I get just about fresh plucked from the rooting tray they come in hand delivered in person. Can't really beat that. So mine are usually in the ground just a day or two after being uprooted. No wasted time in the mail without air. And he sells good seeds as well, so I am a satisfied customer all around. I'll include a link to his website...

Here is a link that might be useful: Heavenly Seed

To foolish pleasure: Did you read my previous msgs? I did harvest them, plenty of them, gave them to everybody, these are the leftovers. They produced much more than I expected, guess I'm just lucky! Have you ever grown zucchini? Did you eat them all yourself? Congratulations! They'd be coming out of my ears if I tried. Regarding your soil, sticky means heavy clay, the tubers can't grow in it, no oxygen is reaching the roots. I wouldn't just add sand, I'd try to remove as much of the clay top layer you can and replace it with loose, mulchy, rich soil instead. If you don't want to mix your own or deal with manure, there are plenty of good blends commercially available, some even contain slow release fertilizer.