How do I "teach" R that columns 1, 2, and 3 are the Year-Month-Day

I do not see any posting on this topic from Jeff Newmiller.
I seek a way to ?teach? R that "2021-07-25? represents a Year, Month, and Day.
Greg Coats

Fuel <- c(50.45, 61.48, 59.07, 55.40, 30.63, 41.35, 32.81, 49.86, 62.99, 89.37)
plot (Fuel)
Dates <- c("2021-07-25", "2021-08-27", "2021-09-26", "2021-11-04", "2021-11-22", "2021-11-26", "2021-12-06", "2022-01-14", "2022-04-29", "2022-06-11")
plot (Dates)

Error in plot.window(...) : need finite 'ylim' values
In addition: Warning messages:
1: In xy.coords(x, y, xlabel, ylabel, log) : NAs introduced by coercion
2: In min(x) : no non-missing arguments to min; returning Inf
3: In max(x) : no non-missing arguments to max; returning -Inf

xyplot (Dates, Fuel)

Error in xyplot(Dates, Fuel) : could not find function "xyplot"

On Jun 15, 2022, at 6:02 AM, Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
Jeff Newmiller's answer which was much shorter *and* only
used base R  instead of an extra package