Sweet Potatoes versus potatoes

Are sweet potatoes easier to grow than regular potatoes? The reason I ask is becuase I noticed that Miller Nurseries only sells sweet potatoes and Sandhill Preservation Center, stopped selling regular potatoes and only sells sweet potatoes. Why is that????

I have a bed ready for potatoes (it will be my first time) for in the spring, but I am still looking for a source. I have gift certificates to Burpee but I'm afraid they will just send one or two eyed seeds (Farmerdill, I thought you mentioned in a different thread somewhere that 1 -2 eyes is not very good) and I don't want to buy them that way now. Anyway, I'm curious about the sweet potatoes versus regular potatoes.

Thanks!

I cannot answer about growing them but for nutrition, sweet potatoes are much better for you. I plan to try some this year.

Just guessing, but the reason for not selling regular (Irish) potatoes may be difficulty in maintaining certification standards. http://www.plantpath.wisc.edu/wspcp/

Sweet potatoes are high in vitamin A. Just a 2/3 cup serving provides 80% RDA.

North of the Potomac River, Irish potatoes are king. South of River, Sweet potatoes take over. Actually you grow either kind most places, but sweet potatoes have a long season and need heat. Irish potatoes do best with cool summers.

Sweet potatoes are available as plants. Irish potatoes, you have to buy potatoes or those little plugs that some places cut from the potato. Shipping costs discourage mailorder vendors, But you should be able to find plenty of seed potatoes locally. Seed potatoes have to go through multiple inspections from planting to shipping to be certified as disease free.

Great info, I didn't know any of that stuff, thank you folks.

Sweetpotatoes grow very well here....with or without black plastic to warm the soil in the early going. It is good in most cases to ridge the soil about 10 inches high and 20 inches wide. if you have just a few plants, voles and mice may nibble on some of the tubers which is more signifigant than when a few nibbles are on a larger planting.

I grew both last year. Well, tried too anyway. It was an extremely wet summer here. Add to that, some critter kept eating the leaves off of my sweet potatoes. I don't think they got much of a chance to grow. The plants were denuded time and again every time they'd grow some leaves. I had only little tiny tubers about the size of a finger not worth the effort. Was a big disappointment as I love sweet potatoes.

My irish potatoes, grew great. The critter was not interested in them. Tasty too. Funny story about it, as my first time growing potatoes. One of the varieties was an early variety and it never flowered. So I thought, when the plants were dying, that I had failed because I had read that when the plants flower, that's when the potatoes are growing underground. Well, just to be sure, I dug down and didn't find any potatoes. But I had to be really sure, so I dug down really deep and my trowel impaled my first potato. I was so happy, I raised it up in the air and yelled to my husband I had potatoes! He thought I hurt myself or something. But it was a very happy moment for me as I thought I had failed at growing potatoes. It's such fun to dig down and find them waiting for you in the soil.

I got my seed potatoes from Ronnigers ( http://www.ronnigers.com/ ) last year. They seemed fine. Except they substituted two of the four varieties I ordered and so I did not get what I wanted. Funny thing is, I saw on one of the postings here a link for milk ranch ( http://www.milkranch.com/ ) seed potatoes and checked it out today. Well, the prices were really good as compared to any other site I've seen so far, so I went ahead and ordered some seed potatoes. I got out my packing slip from last year, from Ronnigers and the address is exactly the same as Milk Ranch. So same address, and different prices. Funny, huh? I'll take the lower price this time.

Potatoes are best grown in a acid soil,4.8-5.4.No Lime.Sweet Potatoes do best in a more acid to neutral soil, 5.0 -6.5 .One year I made the mistake of planting potatoes in limed soil and they did porely whereas the sweet potatoes did great.I think in western potatoe growing areas they use a fertilizer with added sulfur.

True, Irish potatoes will grow in an acid soil, and that is usually reccomended to prevent scab. However, some of my best potato crops were in the limestone (pH 6.8) soil of the New River Valley. If you are not bothered with scab, Irish potatoes produce well in a wide range of pH including neutral. ( 6.8- 7.O)
http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/HGIC2214.htm