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Watch more Vegetable Gardening videos: http://www.howcast.com/videos/316225-How-to-Grow-Sweet-Potatoes You don’t have to wait for the holidays to get your sweet potato fix. Grow them yourself and harvest enough to keep yourself satisfied year-round. Step 1: Start early Start your crop early, since sweet potatoes require 100 to 150 days to mature. Begin your slips indoors, about 12 weeks before transplantation. Tip For best results, start your slips from a tuber that is already disease resistant so that this resistance is passed on to your crop. Step 2: Grow slips Grow slips by submerging the bottom third of a tuber in water until it sprouts. Then transfer individual sprouts of 6 inches or longer to their own growing medium to root. Step 3: Plant slips Plant your slips outside when all danger of frost has passed. Transplant into mounds 8 inches high and 12 inches wide, with plants spaced 12 inches apart and rows spaced 3 to 4 feet apart. Tip If you don’t have the space that sweet potato vines require, consider a bush variety instead. Step 4: Water them Water your sweet potatoes with an average of 1 inch per week, but make sure that the soil is well-drained. Excess moisture will rot the tubers. Stop watering 3 to 4 weeks before harvest. Step 5: Care for them Apply low nitrogen fertilizer and pesticide to limit insect damage. Step 6: Harvest Harvest your potatoes before frost can damage them. Use a gardening fork and start about 12 inches from the vine’s center, working your way inward. Step 7: Cure them Leave your crop in the sun to dry for a few hours after harvest, and then move them to a dark, humid space for another 2 weeks to harden. After that, indulge your sweet tooth. Did You Know? Although sweet potatoes are commonly called yams in the U.S., yams are actually a different family of plant that grows mainly in Africa.