There won't be any sweet potatoes there. To get sweet potatoes you must grow a slip from an existing sweet potato and then plant that. When you plant the whole SP, all you get is vines.

Also, sweet potatoes should not be stored in a refrigerator; they keep best in a cool, dry place.

Chances are the vines will be too crowded to produce viable roots. For future reference you should pull excess sprouts so that you have at most one vine per 3 square feet. Late September is a good target date for digging

Thank you. Well, been aa pretty conversation piece at least! Lol.

Plus, if you cut the tips off the vines, you won't get potatoes. The leaves are a yummy cooked green, so why not just let them grow and eat them? That's what I do. I can't get roots no matter what I do, so I just eat the greens.

Um.... well.... i need to disagree with lacyvail. A couple of years ago I planted a sweet potato that had sprouted and started to vine. It was a very prolific vine... went everywhere. That Fall I pulled it out only to find loads of sweet potatoes from that one whole sweet potato.

I've been cutting back the vines because taken over much of my yard. I didn't know that would mess me up. Lol. Live and learn?

Oh you might find some potatoes in there, tho they might not be as big or numerous as growing them "properly". I've only ever planted whole sprouted sweet potatoes and let them ramble around the yard, and have harvested more than a few tubers, but had to search them out and some were less than optimal due to insect damage. Look for thickened, colored roots entering the soil and follow them down, or use a digging fork and lift sections of soil. I think you can check days to harvest for various varieties to know when to check.

After reading all these comments I thought maybe I should thin out the vines. The first one I pulled on had a baby growing. I took a picture and reburied it. :) Did I mention it was a purple sweet potato?

That's what I have! too = )

I have to say, the ones I've harvested were rather dry and hard, but it's likely that's because I just let them grow wild with no care, in sandy 'soil', not my garden beds. I did not like them very much.

Well my bed is FL sandy topped with lots of composted. Lol. I have thrown in some garden soil, too soil, black kow.... was trying to prep a good bed before the take over. Haha.

It would be easy if there was some sort of a sign when to harvest. Then again, if gardening was easy there'd be less people trying.

I also want to say THANK YOU all for helping me, especially on my first post.

Sweet potatoes are tender perennials. Those of us who grow them as annuals harvest just before the first frost or when daylight becomes so short that they quit growing. either way September- October. In your area they will probably last through the winter, but growth will be negligible as the days grow short. The purple all the way varieties have a longer season than regular sweet potatoes.

3 years ago I planted a few seed potatoes(beauregard) that I purchased. Had a good harvest that first year, pulled it all up after harvesting. Next spring, sweet potato vines began growing throughout my garden, same thing this year. Am now just harvesting a few large tubers, expecting more (sweet potatoes need about 100 days to mature. White potatoes are more difficult, as they like it cold and don't tolerate excessive moisture/humidity. I've had success planting disease free seed potatoes - early maturing varieties. I ask the producer to send them to me as soon as he can so I can have them planted by Dec. 1. Water at the base and remove diseased leaves frequently. I also keep them out of the hottest, most intense sun - even in the winter, S Florida can be brutally hot.

Best luck!

I like to grow my white potatoes in the winter too. Our Spring starts around Feb. 1st, so those potatoes have to do a lot of growing before it gets hot in May.