You can order slips through the mail in the spring, but I've had pretty good luck starting my own with a couple small sweet potatoes in jars of water about three months before they are ready to be planted in the ground. I can go into more detail about that this winter.
I generally harvest the roots shortly before a frost is forecasted. Even if we don't actually get a frost, the cold weather and shorter days mean the roots are done growing anyway. The vines spread in all directions, so it is difficult to see where they are planted, so I cut the fines back to wear they are growing out fo the ground to make it easier to dig. I've heard that you can eat the leaves, but I haven't tried them.
In this photo it is hard to see, but the vines are purple -- almost the same color as the soil, and after trimming the vines back, I can see where I need to dig. I always grow purple sweet potatoes, so maybe that is way the stems are purple like this.
Curing
After the sweets are dug up, they need to cure for at least a week at around 85 degrees with high humidity. I've tried a couple of different ways to do this, including having them in my oven with the light on and a pan of water. But this year I put them in a bathroom that we don't use much with a space heater and wet towels hanging in the shower stall. I needed to wet the towels down a lot because the space heater put out such dry heat and the bathroom isn't tightly insulated so the moisture dissipates (on the plus side, we don't get mildew in our bathroom -- not so great for curing sweet potatoes).
I just finished curing them yesterday and now they need to sit in a dark space for several weeks at 55 to 60 degrees before eating so that they are at their tastiest (the starches are converted over to sugars.) My basement isn't that cold yet, but it is getting close.
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