Grow Your Own Monster Sweet Potatoes: 2025 Edition

Sep 18

There’s nothing quite like pulling a massive, fresh sweet potato straight from the garden. This year, we hit the jackpot with some absolute giants, and I’m here to show you exactly how to grow your own. From tiny slips to full-on garden monsters, I’ll walk you through every step—from starting your slips to curing them for maximum sweetness.

Starting Out: Sweet Potato Slips

Sweet potatoes aren’t grown from seeds—they grow from slips, which are little sprouts that come from a mature sweet potato. Making your own slips is super easy and gives you a head start for a strong, healthy harvest.

What You’ll Need

Organic sweet potatoes (less chance of sprout inhibitors)
A shallow tray
Potting soil
Water

How to Grow Your Slips

Prep the tray: Fill it with loose potting soil.
Moisten the soil: Damp, not soggy.
Plant the sweet potatoes: Bury each about halfway.
Wait for sprouts: In 4–6 weeks, slips will start poking out and even grow little roots.

Planting Your Slips

Once your slips are a few inches tall with small roots, they’re ready for the garden.

How to Get Them in the Ground

Dig a hole: Deep enough to cover most of the slip.
Place the slip: Set it in the hole carefully.
Backfill: Gently cover it with soil and make sure it’s stable.
Water well: Keep the soil consistently damp for the first few days so the roots establish quickly.

This year, we planted nine slips in our hoop house. The extended growing season definitely helped these sweet potatoes reach some epic sizes.

Harvesting Your Garden Giants

Harvest day is the best day of the season. Our 2025 crop had some real monsters!

Signs They’re Ready

Sweet potatoes usually take 90–120 days to mature. Yellowing leaves are a good clue, but leaving them a bit longer in a hoop house can lead to even bigger potatoes.

Digging Them Up

Clear the area: Remove leftover vines and leaves.
Start wide: Dig a wide circle; sweet potatoes can spread far.
Lift gently: Use a fork or shovel carefully to avoid cuts and bruises.
Pull and brush: Gently remove and shake off excess dirt.

Compared to our first attempt with a kit, growing these from our own slips in a hoop house made a huge difference.

Curing for Sweetness

Freshly dug sweet potatoes aren’t naturally sweet—they need curing. This process converts starches to sugars and toughens the skin so they store longer.

Why Curing Matters

Sweeter potatoes: Starch turns to sugar.
Heals small cuts: Reduces spoilage.
Better storage: Skin toughens for longer shelf life.

Our Curing Setup

We experimented with a simple method this year:

Container: A bucket
Heat: A heating pad inside
Humidity: A small jar of water inside
Monitoring: Thermometer with a smart app
Protection & airflow: Newspaper for insulation, towel over the top with a small crack

We left the sweet potatoes in there for 5–7 days. During that time, the starches start turning into sugar, and the skins toughen up.

Wrapping It Up

Growing your own sweet potatoes is so satisfying, especially when you pull out huge, homegrown monsters. From slips to hoop house magic and a proper curing process, each step matters.

We’ll share the results of our curing experiment soon—can’t wait to see just how sweet these giant potatoes turn out. Until then, get out there, plant your slips, and keep growing!