Sweet Potatoes - planting dates

I'm trying to put together a notebook on veggies I want to grow and I'm just curious.

The local extension office has left "sweet potatoes" off its planting list for some reason, and the regular "potatoes" section does not include any sweet potato varieties. What are the planting dates for zone 8B?
How far ahead should one start slips?

And, it's likely the wrong season but here's a nice webpage that describes the process for creating the slips:
http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/how-to-plant-and-grow-sweet-potatoes/index.html

Thanks!

! am a bit cooler than you. I start my plant beds around the last of March, for transplant around the first of May. Six weeks is normally ample time to get good slips. Some cultivars are more vigorous slip producers than others.

I'm a bit warmer than you LiseP, but here we can set slips out from mid-March through July. Mine this year went in later than I had planned, about June 6th if I recall. Harvested the beginning of October because I needed the bed space for fall veggies - lol. Decent harvest, but would have been better had I left them longer. Lots of baby tubers forming still. Next year I plan to get them in sooner - probably early April. I should have ample space for them then. I garden in raised beds and have limited space, so they will have to wait until the spring veggies are finished;o)

Farmerdill,
That is the cutest little box I've ever seen! How big is it?

Thanks!!

Gymgirl, its a homemade cold frame, roughly 3 X 3. It was made to fit a storm door pane that I had on hand.

So, Farmerdill, did you plant your sweeties on one end and train them to grow toward the other end of that box? Or are those sweeties planted all over the box so they can trail out?

They are only for slips, pulled when they are 6 inches in lenght. They are then tranplanted onto list in the field. That cold frame will yield about 200 slips.

I got a bunch of sweets on sale about a month ago from the store. They started sprouting and I have only 2 left. I hope to have a similar experience in late Feb. or so. I don't remember them ever sprouting like that before but maybe it's because they usually get eaten too fast.