Part 1 Of 3 On How To Grow Sweet Potato's.... How To Start Sweet Potato Slips 2 Different Ways
Keep you sweet potato's in a warm sunny spot. We have a south facing bay window that works great for this. In about a week the sweet potato will start to put off roots in the water. The white "hairs" coming out of the potato in the picture above are roots beginning to forum.
The slips will grow out of the eyes of the potato. In this picture there is a slip starting to poke out of one of the potato eyes at the top left. One sweet potato can produce anywhere for 10 to 50 slips! It will take 4 to 6 weeks to be able to get harvestable slips.
The second way we start our slips is in soil... First put one to two inches of soil in a container. Use a container that drains well. If the sweet potato is completely covered in water for to long it will began to rot and you will not get any slips from it.
Lay the sweet potato on top of the soil. leave a few inches in between the potato's so they have room to shoot out there roots and not have competition.
Lightly cover the sweet potato's with another layer of soil. Make sure you don't cover them to much or compact the soil. The slips will have trouble coming up if the soil is compact or there is to much on top of them.
In 4 to 6 week I will bring y'all back to show you the next step. Which is getting the sweet potato slips to root. About a week after getting the slips to root we will be going over how to plant them in the ground.
Sweet potato's need about 120 days of temperatures over 85 degrees fahrenheit. It takes some planing and some time to completely grow your own sweet potato's. If you are interested in growing your own you should make a plan NOW and start to execute.
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been inspired by reading your post! I’m drying out some regular potatoes that I’ve around the house, been keeping them for this purpose.
- this is a quick snap of those. Although I’m not particularly fond of sweet potatoes maybe I will grab some sweet potatoes the next time I’m getting produce. Thanks for sharing!
Nice!! I'll Be doing potatoes soon as well. Thank you for the comment @farmer.ace!!👍
So perfectly timed! I'm currently planning my garden. There's not much else I can do since I'm way up North and my garden is buried under two-3 feet of snow!
I guess I really should have paid more attention to my Dad's gardening as a kid. I do remember him cutting up sprouted white potatoes to plant, so last year, when I had a big box of sweet potatoes sprouting, I just assumed it was the same process. Months later, when my dad came to visit, I was proudly telling him what all we had planted, but that the sweet potatoes weren't growing. He chuckled and said, well, you're not going to get any sweet potatoes like that! It was too late in the season to plant them the right way so I'm definitely looking forward to planting some this year!
Haha. I'v herd of a lot of people doing the same thing when trying to plant sweet potatoes. Being "way up north" you might have to use some season extenders to be able to get a good crop. Sweet potatoes need about 120 days of 85+ weather. Good luck!!
very nice. I'm looking forward for more posts on SP. Please make one even after 2 weaks. I tried to grow SP last year but we FAILED. I'm trying to find what whent wrong. I thing it was to cold for it here in Latvia. maybe i should try to grow it under a plastic in a "hotbed"???
what kind of soil do you use?
Sweet potatoes love a sandy soil but will grow in just about an soil as long as it drains. Yea you may need to use some sort of season extender also. SP needs about 120 days of 85+ weather to get a crop. I'll keep you posted!
Very informative post @hopfarmnc ! Excellent pics too!!! Growing sweet potatoes definitely takes some planning and theres a lot that can go wrong. Likewise, a bountiful harvest makes up for all the work!
I like your soil method...gonna try that for some smaller tubers I had left from 2017 harvest...
Thank you @texaspffgrid! Nice pic! That is what I did. Used the smaller tubers in the soil method.
does it mater which end goes up / stays out of the watter??? And how to detect it/
Not really. The eyes of the SP that is in the water will shoot out roots. But usually you want to try to put the pointy end that has been broke off the vine in the water. You can also cut the SP in half and put the cut half in the water