Growing sweet potato from cuttings

 Growing sweet potatoes from slips is super easy.  Easy if you can get the potato to sprout!

Here I sprouted a potato from last harvest.  It was taken from my basement where I store them.  If you buy a store bought sweet potato, there are a couple things to consider.  First most are sprayed with a growth inhibitor.  You will need to soak that off, and keep it warm and moist after that.  Secondly you may also want to consider the variety.  Organic store potatoes are recommended, however they may have an organic growth inhibitor.

 I usually keep a sweet potato growing in an earth-tainer.  Here's the one I kept growing by a pineapple top that I rooted and sprouted.  There's also a live forever plant from our English teacher that I was assigned to take care of.

Sweet potatoes make great house plants and will grow a long vine like this one.  Pineapples make good houseplants too!

 That other earth-tainer looked so bad I thought I'd put up this years model.  These bins are 8 bucks on sale at Menards and make a really nice looking one.

Ok so you get some sprouts to grow.  Then you cut them.

Find some sort of container that you can add water to.  I've got some nice ones here!

You want a piece that has a little stem with it and a leaf.  Cover most of it with water.

Here are mine all ready to go.

Here are the roots growing after 3 days.  Keep an eye on the water.  These guys are ready for transplant.

I used my root view container for these early guys.  You can see that they are doing great!  You should get your transplants ready to be put in after the first frost.  Sweet potatoes need a warm climate to grow.  Aside from growing in the earth-tainer then putting on the deck, or in a root view to show students  I plan to get more sprouts near the frost free date, put them into cow pot composting pots, then into the garden they will go past may 15th.  There's no big hurry till it gets warm.