Sweet Potato Experiment

 In the garden sweet potatoes are started from “slips.” Slips are long sprouts that come out of a sweet potato and that have been pulled off the sweet potato mother and put in water until they have developed a good root system. Then the slips are ready to go into the garden, where they vine off in every direction and, subterraneously, develop new sweet potatoes.

Sweet potato slips cost $8 per dozen at our local nursery. Last summer we replanted sweet potatoes twice, spending altogether $24 for a crop that failed to produce. Being a frugal soul, I decided to start my own slips this year.

I’m learning a lot about sweet potatoes and about different methods of starting them. I’d only seen people start them by sticking them in a jar of water where they put out roots and slips. I thought I was being inventive when I laid one already-sprouting sweet potato on its side supported by pebbles in a dish of water. Then I watched a YouTube video and saw a fellow put sweet potatoes on their sides in an aluminum pan with potting soil. Another guy cut a sweet potato in half and stuck the two cut ends in water to root.

My own experiment is going pretty well.

The two Beauregards (back row left and center), saved from previous crops are doing the best of any. They were already beginning to sprout when I put them in water. This morning I pulled off two slips (front row right) and put them in water to root.

Second best is the Garnet Yam (front row left) that I bought at the Merc. I believe I put the wrong end in water. (I’ve since learned that the stem end should be at the top and the root end in the water.) I had it in a narrow-mouthed quart jar until I discovered that all the sprouts were developing below the jar opening. Now it’s in a bowl wide enough to allow the sprouts to grow up.

Finally there’s the poor old Japanese Yam (back row right), which has just two tiny roots and no sprouts at all. I’m not giving up on it yet, though. Potatoes that have been in cold storage are slower to sprout.

Isn’t it great that a simple horticultural experiment can make a simple person happy?

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer