During the winter heating time of year , the cupboard powerful next to my furnace is particularly toasty . Mostly that ’s because the ductwork in my previous house leaves a heap to be desire . Nevertheless , I ’ve been able to put that superfluous - affectionate spot to salutary use .
Turns out , it ’s perfect for growing sweet potato slips . ( Slips are baby plant life which grow off of sweet potato tubers , and affectionateness really spur their development . )
Now , if you grew your own sweet potatoes last time of year and still have some decent tubers left , you might need to try start some slips for yourself . ( Alternatively , you might also have success with fund - bought , organic mellisonant potatoes that have n’t been treated with a growth inhibitor . )
Just one mellifluous spud can net you at least 20 slips — and often many more than that .
show more : Here are some pointers for growing and curing your own angelic white potato .
Supplies for Sweet Potato Slips
You should pluck only the healthiest - count sweet potatoes to propagate . That means rejecting sweet potato with mar , snub and obvious mansion of disease .
peaked potatoes can result in sickly slip . If the slips you grow are compromise , your new sweet white potato vine crop belike will be , too .
You should also prefer odorous tater that are your preferred size and material body , since the slips typically take after the “ female parent ” tuber from which they grew . Aside from your mother sweet white potato , you ’ll also ask growing containers , soil and a seedling heat mat .
When growing slips , cleanliness is paramount . To help guard against disease , I soak my great deal in a meek blanching agent solution , rinse well , then surveil up with a scrub in hot , soapy body of water and a final rinsing . I also utilize infertile potting mixture , rather than garden territory which , itself , can harbor disease , fungal gnat larvae and other possible troublemakers .
When to Start?
How do you knowwhento start your slip ? Sweet white potato flourish in hot dirt . So , in part , when you start your slips will bet on the issue of red-hot Day that the varieties you ’re get ultimately postulate to get on . Some “ early ” sweet potato types can develop respectable genus Tuber much sooner than their late - time of year similitude .
Let ’s say you live on in the Deep South with its foresighted , live summers . You could easy develop long - season sweet potatoes likeSandhill Preservation Center‘s Jersey Orange and Stoker Red . And you may engraft your slips out in the garden much sooner than I can , since my Indiana rise season has comparatively few hot Clarence Shepard Day Jr. .
As a result , I grow former heirlooms such as Ivis White Cream and Ginseng Red . And I do n’t put them out in my garden until my soil is systematically affectionate . ( To be safe , I wait a couple of weeks after my middling last frost escort and I also use charge plate sheeting to help warm up my planting orbit beforehand of sentence . )
Incidentally , if you have enough space indoors , you’re able to always bulge new set of slips every couple of weeks and then in turn embed them out in the garden . Keep note about the performance of each of these wave of slips . Then you ’ll be able to use this entropy as you settle when to start your slips next year .
scan more : Get a jump on spring with an indoor gardening setup .
Get Growing
When you are ready to constitute , fill your containers a piddling less than halfway with potting intermixture . Next , lay your Irish potato horizontally on top of the soil , pressing them down slightly so that they make near contact . Finally , surround them with just enough additional soil mix that about half of each cherubic potato is still evidently visible above the soil billet .
Water them in , and keep the grunge comparatively moist .
Ideally , the soil temperature should be about 70 to 75 degree F. That means , if you do n’t have a really strong smirch already , you ’re going to want to use a seedling heat mat . And , unless you have a very cheery room , you might also need to use supplemental garden light .
utter with leaves and bright , white root , little clump of slips will appear on the exterior of your semi - planted tubers . When my slips are about 4 or 5 inch magniloquent , I gently pull them off of their mother potato and separate them from one another .
If I ’ve timed things correct , I can found them out in the garden right aside . But if I have n’t ? I ’ll transplantation individual slips into paper or peat tummy , and keep them fond and watered until I can plant them outside .
When itistime to get them in the ground , I carefully displume launch the bottom of each pot , so that flora roots can more easy penetrate the soil — and generate a bumper crop of sweet white potato vine along the way .
