Starting Sweet Potatoes

Well, the last method that I found for starting sweet potatoes was a bust. But I found another one that seems to be working well.

What this one recommended was taking a sweet potato that had started to send up shoots and placing it in a container with some water. I did this several weeks ago and here’s where we are now:

These sweet potatoes are from my MASSIVE harvest last fall. They are really too big, and at this size, they get a little fibrous, so using them to start this year’s plants seemed like a great option to keep them from going to waste.

Once the “slips” get about 6 or 7 inches tall, I’ve been pulling them off (with roots attached, if there are any) and placing them in a jar of water so that they will send out more roots.

As you can see, this process is working well. I would like to have around 30 slips for the garden because this year, we have more space. These slips will be much more well rooted than the ones I bought last spring, since I still have a few weeks before I can plant these.

I also ordered my zinnia seeds because they did such a good job at keeping the deer away from my sweet potato vines. I like Benary Giant from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.