Okay, I have a silly question for you. We want to expand our garden this year and grow sweet potatoes. Never had them in the garden before so how do you get your slips (for this newbie)?
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Okay, I have a silly question for you. We want to expand our garden this year and grow sweet potatoes. Never had them in the garden before so how do you get your slips (for this newbie)?
The way I did it last year was to use an old sweet potato from the store, let it sprout, pop the slip off at the base, and put it in water just a few centimeters deep. Wait for it to put out some roots, and then plant it. I also tried planting the slip (that's the sprouted part by the way) directly in the soil when it was warm enough. We got a few more potatoes from the slips in water than we did from direct planting, but we also were able to start those slips indoors when it was still cold outside.
Great information! Thank you for sharing this. I can't wait to get some growing in the garden.
No problem! It was actually pretty fun to experiment with, and I found that my sweet potatoes tasted so much better than store bought. Some of them were huge, too! I had one that was nearly the size of an infant's head!
Wow! That is huge! I will be happy with anything I can grow.
They're surprisingly easy to grow! I literally planted them along a fence in a low-traffic area and left them alone. When the leaves yellowed, I dug them up and kind of cured them on newspaper in a bathroom. They turned out great! I wish you good luck with them!
I am so looking forward to this! The slips have already started to sprout so it won't be long!
I had never planted sweet potatoes in my life, until... one year I discovered a "store-bought" sweet potato in the back of my cabinet, growing sprouts all over. Since I had an empty raised bed, I just buried it in there and left it all summer to enjoy the spreading greenery in the garden. In the fall when the vines started dying back, I dug up the flower bed and to my surprise, ended up with a laundry basket full of sweet potatoes of all sizes!