Cured sweet potatoes belong in a dark, ventilated spot inside the living part of the house, holding somewhere around 55 to 60°F.

Sweet potatoes that rot in storage were usually damaged at harvest, not in the pantry.

Give each sweet potato slip about 12 inches of row, with 3 to 4 feet between rows, and you’ll get a mix of table-sized roots.

Sweet potatoes want loose, well-drained ground that is modest in fertility and low in nitrogen. Sandy loam is close to ideal.

A slip is a leafy, rooted shoot that grows out of a stored sweet potato, and the slip, not the root, is what goes into the garden.

Sweet potatoes can be grown well north of where most gardeners try them, but the crop has to be treated as a warmth-gathering project, not a normal…

Sweet potatoes rotate with almost everything except their own kind. The plant belongs to the morning glory family, so the nightshade rules that govern…

Sweet potatoes are grown on ridges because a ridge solves three problems at once: cold soil, soggy soil and hard soil.

You can grow your own sweet potato slips from a stored root, and it works well when the root is healthy and kept warm.