How to Build a Hot Bed for Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes grow from slips, which are shoots produced from sweet potato tubers. Each tuber can produce multiple slips. This allows you to start several plants from a single potato. The tuber requires constant warmth to produce healthy slips. A hotbed ensures even warmth and good slip production, even if you must start the slips in spring when temperatures are still cool. Hot beds are rarely used to grow the plants to maturity, since the long vines of the sweet potato plants will outgrow the confines of the bed.

Sand
Heat cables
Cable thermostat
Hardware cloth
Cold frame or 1-inch-thick plywood and glass
Sweet potato tubers

Instructions

- 1
  Dig a 6-by-3-foot pit in the garden. Make the pit 12 inches deep.
- 2
  Spread 4 inches of clean sand in the bottom of the bed. Level the surface of the sand.
- 3
  Lay a hotbed heating cable on top of the soil. Use 2 feet of cable per square foot of bed, coiling the cables back and forth so each loop of cable sits no more than 6 inches from the next. Plug the cable into an electric cable thermostat.
- 4
  Cover the cable with 2 inches of sand. Spread hardware cloth over the surface of the sand. Spread 2 more inches of sand over the top of the cloth.
- 5
  Set a 6-by-3-foot cold frame box over the hotbed pit. Alternatively, make your own from 1-inch-thick plywood. Cut the plywood so the front, or south side, is 12 inches tall and the back is 18 inches tall. Cut the sides so they are 3 feet long and angle up from the shorter front to the taller back. Attach a piece of framed glass to the back wall with hinges.
- 6
  Set the sweet potato tubers on top of the sand in the hotbed. Space the tubers 1 inch apart in all directions. Cover the tubers with sand to a 2-inch depth.
- 7
  Plug the hotbed cable into a 110-volt outlet. Set the thermostat so the temperature in the bed remains between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
- 8
  Water the bed as needed so the sand remains moist but doesn't become soggy. Transplant the slips once they reach 4 to 6 inches tall and after spring frost danger has passed.

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