Starting Sweet Potato Slips
Irish potatoes can be cut
into chunks to plant, but starting your own sweet potatoes requires a
bit more TLC. Tubers are generally sprouted in either water or
moist sand, beginning at this time of year. Each tuber can create
a dozen shoots, which are then broken off and put in water to grow
roots. These "slips" are then planted in the garden after all
danger of frost is past.
Last year was our first attempt at creating our own sweet potato slips,
and it was pretty much an abject failure. We put tubers in jars
partially full of water and watched as the tubers slowly rotted into
gelatinous blobs. Then we went to the feed store and shelled out
far too much cash to buy slips.
This year, I've resolved to do better. I think our problem last
year was that the trailer is very chilly at this time of year as we
move out of wood stove season. We wear sweaters, but sweet
potatoes are unthrilled by sweater weather and instead require warm
room temperature for sprouting. So this year, we've put a car
seat heating mat under the tubers and a space heater beside them.
The space heater only goes on at night when it's really chilly, but
I've had the heating mat on constantly since Monday and already a
quarter of the tubers have started to sprout! I'm keeping my
fingers crossed, but so far the experiment seems to be doing well!
| This post is part of our How to Start Sweet Potato Slips series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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