Thursday, November 8, 2007

Sweet potatoes

I harvested my sweet potatoes the other day and thought it would be fun to look back over the development of these guys.

I started my sweet potatoes by growing slips from an organic sweet potato I bought at the store. I got many slips.

However, only 1 slip actually survived planting, here it is shortly after being planted.

It grew quickly and made beautiful flowers. At one point it was overflowing the pot and trying to take over the deck! This is what it looked like the day I harvested. You can see a sweet potato coming up out of the dirt.
My harvest from 1 slip. I have no idea if this is a good harvest from 1 plant but I was happy with it.

9 comments:

linda m said...

Very impressive

Mom

Howling Hill said...

Very, very cool. Mind giving directions on how you got started the potato to get the slip?

Christy said...

The slips were easy to grow. I bought an organic sweet potato, I think it is important it is organic because I think normal ones are treated like potatoes to keep them from sprouting. I cut the sweet potato in half and put each half in a cup of water with toothpicks to hold it up. I put the cut half down in the water. After 2 weeks or so slips starting growing out of the top of the potato. Once the slips have roots, you can remove them from the potato and plant them. I think it took about 6 weeks from the time I cut the potato to the time I planted the slips. Once in the dirt, the slip grew like crazy! I've never seen a plant grow so fast.

Akkire said...

can you grow a slip in the winter inside a house? what exactly is a slip - just a potato cut in half and buried?

i'm glad I found you through Angie's blog.

Christy said...

A slip is like a seedling for a sweet potato. Since they don't grow from seed, you grow the seedling from the potato itself and it is called a slip. You can order slips or make your own. You can grow them in the house in the winter, but they do eventually need to be planted to form the actual sweet potatoes.

Akkire said...

how do you make your own slips?

Christy said...

Erikka- the comment I made before your first comment gives the directions on how I made my slips. It really is very easy to do!

Anonymous said...

My mother always called the slip the eye of the potato. You can cut out a hunk of the potato (that has the eye, sprout or slip as you stated. Route it in water, transplant it into the soil and care for it. Sally

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