Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Sweet potato slips- it worked!

 I started these sweet potato slips back in August some time.  They took a while, but sped up a bit when I changed to tank water rather than tap water, and put them on a sunny windowsill.  I took 3 slips off the sweet potato with the most slips last week, and the one below has quickly developed roots.
 I might wait until next week to plant it out, as this week looks like it will be mostly cold and rainy.
I hope to put at least 5 sweet potato plants in this year, as last year I planted one to see if it would grow, and it thrived even without much water.  It produced 5 good sized ones, and quite a few smaller ones.  I kept the smaller ones in a paper bag, and they are the ones I'm growing the slips from.  The variety is 'Beauregard', which is apparently the most common in Australia, as it only takes about 95 days to grow a crop, and can handle colder temperatures.  I followed instructions from here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been trying to grow slips from the 2 smaller ones you gave me although I think I've started a little late although there is a suggestion of roots forming. :) I'll change the water over to filtered immediately too. There's a space in the greenhouse I was planning to use but with luck they might grow outside too. If I get enough slips I might go for 2 beds. :)

Alicia said...

Maybe you could do a trial with some in the greenhouse, and some outside. Then you'll know which way to go the following summer. I put 3 sweet potatoes in jars, and I can see that one is going to be the most prolific, so I planted the other 2 in the garden- they have roots and one has small slips.