Welcome to Day 27 of my 30 Day Challenge: How to Start a Vegetable Garden.

My last article was very important for gardening success - attracting bees and other pollinators to your garden. Check it out on Street Articles: How To Start A Vegetable Garden - 30 Day Challenge - The Great Pollinators.

SWEET POTATOES

Sweet potatoes are one of the most nutritious foods available.

Ever since my family visited the Carolinas for vacation, I have been interested in learning how to grow sweet potatoes.

For those of you who have not visited the Carolinas, drive around town and you will find numerous road-side "stands" (more like pick up trucks on the side of the road) with people selling huge bags of sweet potatoes out of the back of their trucks.

This has always intrigued me as I would love to grow huge bags of sweet potatoes like this.

Since this is my year to grow all my favorite vegetables, I desperately want to grow some delicious sweet potatoes.

GROWING REGULAR POTATOES

Having already researched how to grow regular potatoes, I assumed growing sweet potatoes would be similar. It is not.

Potatoes can be grown by letting one begin to sprout on its own and then cutting the potato into pieces where only 1 or 2 sprouts are on each piece.

Place 5 or 6 in a large container (I use garbage bags) and let them grow.

Each will multiply into dozens of potatoes if you layer additional soil onto the plant to encourage new spud growth.

GROWING SWEET POTATOES

Sweet potatoes require a little more work and a little luck.

First, you need to encourage your sweet potato to create slips. Slips are plants that grow off of an existing sweet potato.

In order to encourage slips to grow, you must do the following:

1. Take a sweet potato and cut it in half.
2. Submerge the cut end in 1 inch of water.
3. Within 1 month, the sweet potato will root and small slip plants will grow on the part above water.
4. Once they have a few well developed leaves, gently snap off the slips and place them in a glass of water to create roots on the slips.
5. In a few days, roots will appear. Plant the sweet potato slips individually in large containers of loose soil.
6. In roughly 2-3 months, they will be ready to harvest and will yield 5-6 potatoes per slip.

MY RESULTS

My first sweet potato rotted after 1 week.

I had placed the sweet potato in a plastic container with 1" of water. I did not suspended it over the water with toothpicks since I had read it didn't matter if you suspended it or not. However, this sweet potato rotted out from the bottom.

For my second attempt, I bought two organic sweet potatoes. One I suspended, the other I did not.

This time, the suspended sweet potato created roots. The one not suspended did not.

UPDATE!

It has been nearly five weeks since I attempted to start sweet potato slips.

I started with four sweet potato halves, three of them I placed directly in containers and one of them I suspended over the water using plastic toothpicks.

Of the three sweet potato halves I placed directly into containers, one became moldy after two weeks and did not create any slips. Two created roots and grew a few very small slips before they became moldy as well.

My final sweet potato half (the one that was suspended over water with plastic toothpicks) currently has 3 slips growing on it and the slips are 8-12 inches long and very healthy.

This is was the only fully successful sweet potato starter. The other three were not suspended and despite the appearance of very small slips on two of them, they eventually molded and died off.

NEXT STEP

It is now time for the next step. Time to snap off my sweet potato slips and root them.

The best method to snap off the slips is to gently grasp them near the base of the sweet potato and twist. The slip will come right off without damaging the slip.

I then took a quart mason jar, filled it with water, and placed each slip in the jar. See the end result in the attached picture.

Sweet potato plants are some of the most beautiful to grow. I personally think these slips make a beautiful display while they are rooting.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED

I have to say that after attempting to grow slips off 6 different halves of sweet potatoes and only achieving success with one of the six, I do not understand what causes one to create slips and one not to.

However, the only one that grew slips big enough to move onto the next step - rooting the slips - was the one suspended over the container with toothpicks.

However, it has been a fun experiment and I will definitely try again next year to see if I can achieve greater success.

30 DAY CHALLENGE

The 30 day challenge is coming to an end. However, you can still follow my Garden Journal on my blog to get daily tips on growing your garden.