{"id":951,"date":"2019-12-02T13:03:03","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T13:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/?p=951"},"modified":"2019-12-02T13:08:55","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T13:08:55","slug":"best-climatic-conditions-for-sweet-potato-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/2019\/12\/02\/best-climatic-conditions-for-sweet-potato-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Climatic Conditions for Sweet Potato Farming"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Regina Pasipanodya<\/p>\n

The sweet potato<\/a> is a plant that belongs to the bindweed. It is large in nature, sweet-tasting and starchy Sweet potato leaves<\/a> and shoots are sometimes eaten as vegies.
The sweet potato, especially the orange variety, is often called a “yam” in parts of North America, but is botanically very distinct from true yams.
It has been noted by several farmers that sweet potato plant does not tolerate frost. It grows best at an average temperature of 24 \u00b0C (75 \u00b0F), abundant sunshine and warm nights. Annual rainfalls of 750\u20131,000 mm (30\u201339 in) are considered most suitable, with a minimum of 500 mm (20 in) in the growing season.<\/p>\n

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The crop is sensitive to drought at the tuber initiation stage 50\u201360 days after planting, and it is not tolerant to water-logging, as it may cause tuber rots and reduce growth of storage roots if aeration is poor.
Depending on the cultivar and conditions, tuberous roots mature in two to nine months. With care, early-maturing cultivars can be grown as an annual summer crop in temperate areas. Sweet potatoes rarely flower when the daylight is longer than 11 hours.
They are mostly propagated by stem or root cuttings or by adventitious shoots called “slips” that grow out from the tuberous roots during storage.<\/p>\n

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True seeds are used for breeding only.
They grow well in many farming conditions and have few natural enemies; pesticides are rarely needed. Sweet potatoes are grown on a variety of soils, but well-drained, light- and medium-textured soils with a pH range of 4.5\u20137.0 are more favorable for the plant.\u00a0
They can be grown in poor soils with little fertilizer. However, sweet potatoes are very sensitive to aluminum toxicity and will die about six weeks after planting if lime is not applied at planting in this type of soil. Because they are sown by vine cuttings rather than seeds, sweet potatoes are relatively easy to plant. Because the rapidly growing vines shade out weeds, little weeding is needed.
In temperate regions, sweet potatoes are most often grown on larger farms and are harvested before first frosts.
Sweet potatoes are cultivated throughout tropical and warm temperate regions wherever there is sufficient water to support their growth.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Regina Pasipanodya The sweet potato is a plant that belongs to the bindweed. It is large in nature, sweet-tasting and starchy Sweet potato leaves and shoots are sometimes eaten as vegies.The sweet potato, especially the orange variety, is often called a “yam” in parts of North America, but is botanically very distinct from true…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":959,"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions\/959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thesoil.co.zw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}