Start Your Own Sweet Potato Slips, It’s Easy!

Got a sweet potato? From just one medium sized sweet potato you can easily start 40 or more new plants, or “slips”.  It can be sometimes be hard to find sweet potato slips for sale, but they are incredibly easy and cheap to start for yourself.  Here is how:

1. Place a sweet potato that is disease free and without rotten spots in a glass jar, lengthwise.

2. Fill the glass jar with water, leaving about 2 inches of the sweet potato out of the water.

3. Place the jar with the water and sweet potato in a warm sunny window, changing the water about once a week or more to avoid stinky anaerobic conditions.

4. Watch your sweet potato sprout new vines “slips” over the course of a couple of weeks.

5. When the new sprouts are about 5 inches or so long, twist them off at the base of the mother tuber and place them in their own jar of water.  You can put around 20 or so in one jar. Try to keep each one separated around the rim of the jar, just so they don’t get too tangled up.

6. These slips will quickly grow roots of their own and can be planted out as soon as the ground has warmed sufficiently (70 degrees min.). Plant the slips in loose, deeply worked, well drained soil.  Plant the slips in 3 inch wide holes about 5 inches deep, leaving only the leaves above ground. Plants should be spaced around a foot apart from their neighbor.

To find locally grown vegetable plants and other great stuff from your area, check out Pick-A-Pepper.com!

Photo by Kristen Koster
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