About a month ago I started soaking some of my sweet potatoes I grew from last year. I chose some spuds that were already forming eyes so they were ready to start growing. Within a few days they shot off roots and now I have new growth.
Now these vines are a almost a foot tall. Much larger than the previous slips I grew. This year I am trying to grow them much larger to see if they do better in the garden.
Using water dishes I soak the spuds in water and they quickly react by taking up that water and sending out new growth.
I am amazed how quickly these have grown. Seems using larger spuds gives off faster slip growth.
Once they start sagging I will cut them from the spud and then put them in a dish of water. This will cause the cut vine to form it's own roots so I can plant it.
There are some small eyes forming as well. Seems like they were the ones that formed before I even soaked them. Strange those end up not growing much.
I started some smaller sweet potato spuds for slips about a month ago. I picked my smallest spuds and sure enough they produce the smallest slips.
Even the roots are smaller on the tiny spuds, maybe next year I'll make sure to just use larger spuds for growing slips.
The smaller spuds also have some sad looking leaves. Maybe they are just too small for trying to grow slips. Now I know..
The larger spuds have good looking leaves and much larger slips. They are also higher up by the window so maybe that helps too.
I noticed the vines were wrapping together. It helps them grow further, it was cool to see that.
I think it's kind of hard to get an idea of how large these slips are right now. So I held a sponge next to it for reference.
Next up is for them to get too long to grow up straight. And then I will cut them from the spud and soak them in water. Roots will form and soon enough they can go into the ground to grow more spuds this year.