sweet potato question

Just when I thought the experiment was a failure, I noticed that my sweet potatoes were starting to sprout.


The question is, what exactly do you plant. Do I slice the whole thing in half lengthwise and plant the whole thing or do I cut out the section with the growth and plant it? Or do I cut the vine of of the potato and plant it? I am unsure exactly what constitutes the "slip".

I read where you are supposed to wait until the vine is 6-8 inches long also. Any clues would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

It took some time, but I got my answer. I think.

Once the potato sprouts you let it grow to about 6" or so and then cut it off near the potato. That is the slip and that is what you plant. From what I gather you can plant them directly into the soil - covering about 3 nodes in the process.

If anyone finds errors in this info, please let me know.

I don't know if this is the correct way or not, but the way we do ours is to place the end of a large, long sweet potato in a wide-rimmed pint jar and keep the water level up to the rim of the jar. I don't bother with the toothpicks. It will begin sprouting above the water line, mainly at the top end, and the part under water will grow roots.

We wait until the slips/sprouts/vines grow four or five inches long on the mother root, then snap them off and put them in water until they grow roots. (It doesn't take long, but they will keep growing longer as long as you don't let them go dry.) Once they've grown roots you can either transplant them to pots, or if the weather's warm enough, put them directly in the garden. The mother root will keep producing shoots for months. (We got 24 slips from one potato, stretched over about four months.) I've never tried putting unrooted slips right into the ground, so I can't say if it works or not, but they root pretty quickly in water, so as long as you keep the soil well watered it may work fine.

We had to keep replacing our plants in the garden due to vole damage until we finally had nothing left but the mother root which was still putting out a few shoots even though the root end had nearly rotted away in the water. We took it to the garden and buried it, and it is now producing vines, too. It had been in water since December. That's way too early to start slips, but it's the only potato we had left from an heirloom variety and we wanted to make certain we got plenty of slips from it. That's why we had to keep pulling off the slips and rooting them, then transplanting those to pots while the mother put out more slips.

I had one slip which grew very long before I snapped it from the mother root. I cut it in two, pulled a few leaves away from the cut end, and popped both slips into water, where they both rooted. So, it's not difficult at all to get sweet potato slips to root.

After a rough spring with unexpected drops in temperature and major vole damage, our sweet potato vines are finally starting to take off in the garden. At harvest we'll see if all the harsh treatment weakened them or made them stronger.

As an experiment I put the leaves I pulled from the cut stem into water to see if they would root. They took longer but they rooted too! But I didn't try planting them because I thought they would make weak plants. Maybe I should have tried at least one to complete the experiment.

Thanks. That is very helpful. I will let you know how it goes. Mine will go in a tad late, but here in so cal autumn is often the warmest time of year so I am not too worried and we rarely see a frost before December in this little microclimate. I would love to have fresh sweet potatoes (or garden harvested anyway) for Thanksgiving.

Growing Sweet Potato Slips I Wet My Plants

How funny and also informative. I may try to grow slips in the spring, even though sweet potatoes don't grow well here, it will be fun to try.

Furbalsmom wrote:How funny and also informative. I may try to grow slips in the spring, even though sweet potatoes don't grow well here, it will be fun to try.

I t would behoove you to start them as early as possible. It took forever for my slips to grow - I almost threw them out because I thought they were just not going to sprout. And once they started to grow it took awhile until they were big enough. They need a long growing season so you want it in the ground asap once warm. Just my experience.

Thanks Chopper. I'll be buying sweet potatoes next week anyhow, so I will pick up a couple extra to try for some slips

What a neat thread. Hm... I have a couple of sweet potatoes sitting around, too. Sounds like a fun project for January. I'm in!

for those of you in north you can grow sweet potatoes. there was and article I on how to do it . I will post the article it when find it. it can't be that hard but i think you will need bed deeper then 6 inches bed to do it and get good results.

Did anyone who tried slips get sweet potatoes at harvest time? We grew some but they didn't seem to like Mel's Mix very much. There's an elderly man just around the corner who sells slips every year and he claims that they're from sweet potatoes that are a special heirloom variety that he's grown for decades, but the potatoes we got were fairly inedible. Sweet potatoes are a tropical vine (from what I read, anyway) so I would think we could grow them here in Virginia. We've talked about putting a bed together that's sandy specifically for sweet potatoes, but we'll see if we get it together this year

miinva wrote:Did anyone who tried slips get sweet potatoes at harvest time?

I planted 5 slips in a 2X2 box of mel's mix. I had more sweet potatoes than I knew what to do with and they crowded the box.

They need about 100 days to grow. I planted mine late and picked by digging into the dirt from about September and pulled everything out at Thanksgiving. LOTS of SPs small and large. Gave them away. Took them with me back east. Just had the last one. Had I been able to leave them in the ground longer I might well have had more big ones.

Talk about kismet! Tonight I found a bag with four little white sweet potatoes that we forgot about after buying them at the farmer's market, and they're sprouting! I put them in a tray of water. If I get slips I'll definitely plant them

miinva wrote:Did anyone who tried slips get sweet potatoes at harvest time?

Miinva,

A friend who lives near here tried them last year. They planted several. All but one failed, but the one that succeeded did very well. No idea why the trouble, as planting conditions seemed to be identical. Good luck with yours!