PART 2 OF GROWING SWEET POTATOES. ROOTING THE SWEET POTATO SLIPS TW...

Growing your own sweet potatoes from start to finish takes a lot of time and a little bit of planning. Started these sweet potatoes in the jars about 2 months ago and some of the slips are just now ready to be rooted.

The first step in growing your own sweet potatoes is getting your sweet potato to put off slips. A good rule of thumb is that each sweet potato will put off about 10 to 15 slips.

These sweet potatoes are a Vining variety. Which means as the Vine goes along the ground it will root itself and then produce a sweet potato there. So you can get multiple sweet potatoes out of one vine. There is also a bush sweet potatoes but I've never grown those before.

When some of the slips have gotten 4 to 6 inch long it's time to take the next step. Some of the slips will even start to produce roots from the eyehole it's growing out of.

Once you've identified the slip you're going to take off the sweet potato put your fingers around the base of the slip and pop it out of the sweet potato with a little pull.

We were able to get 10 slips off the sweet potatoes today. They ranged from almost 4 inches to about 7 inches Long. I will pop more of the sweet potato slips off in about a week. They need to get a little bit longer first.

I'm trying two different methods to root the sweet potato slips. One is in a glass of water and the second way is in seed trays with potting soil. Both are pretty simple methods.

In the glass I just put an inch or two of water then the sweet potato slips. They should push out roots in about 2 weeks. From there you can plant them in potting soil or go straight to the ground as long as the ground temperature is above 60 degrees.

In the seed trays I made sure to plant the slips at least one inch into the potting soil. Gave them some water and they're good to go. These will take about two weeks to root then as soon as your soil is above 60 degrees at night go ahead and plant.

This is what the sweet potatoes look like after their haircut.

Sweet potatoes need about a hundred days at 85 degree weather or above to produce large tumors. They do not do well in the cold at all. But if you're in a tropical climate you can grow them year-round. I've even heard of some people using sweet potatoes as their ground cover in large Food Forests.

Did you know you could also eat the leaves off the sweet potato plant. They can be bitter the older the leaves get but they taste a lot like spinach and turnip greens.