For those that don't know you can eat sweet potato leaves, they are comparable to spinach and many people grow them just for the leaves and not the SP to use in salads or as wraps like lettuce or anywhere you would use spinach.
@@rbellionrises9851 just cut off some of the ends of the green shoots after a large amount of growth covers the ground. The vines will put out multiple growths at the end like trimming upright plants.
My grandpa gave me a cardboard box of sweet potatoes from his garden (to eat) but I left them in on top of my rain barrel for several weeks and forgot about them. When I discovered them I figured they wouldn't be any good but to my surprise, they had all grown some tubers. I had 8 of them so I made 8 mounds from my compost pile in a large circle about 20 feet in diameter. In a few DAYS, all of them had tons of leaves growing. They have been in the ground now a month and are growing out of control. The vines have run across the ground to the neighboring mound and have sort of connected. It looks really cool. I had no clue how to grow them but it seems like I did exactly the right thing.
A few weeks ago I bought a sweet potato at the grocery store. I kinda forgot about it. Then when I decided to eat it, it had shoots all over it. I was ready to pitch it but then I felt guilty and cruel because it had so many shoots. You can tell it was so determined to live so I planted it. :)
+dmarcus1260 Yay! You won't regret it when it's time for harvest. :) Sweet potato leaves are edible too! Checkout my other video on how to cook them. Happy Gardening!
I would like to thank Wendi Phan for this great concise, quick moving video that explains HOW to cultivate sweet potato, sharing several techniques, as well as her clever suggestion that sweet potato can make an attractive ground cover with attractive flowers.
Great job, thanks for including all the info i needed in a concise way, and not burying the 4 important things in an hour long video of fodder and chat, keep growing! Keep teaching! You’re good at it!
This is the best sweet potato video I have seen on the internet. Yes, they are part of the morning glory family. I love morning glory 's. I planted scarlet one's this spring and waiting for them to soon bloom so I can take pictures of them as I do every year. You do a beautiful job. Thank you for sharing.🥰🌺
i was given a clipping from a sweet potato vine a couple years back. I basically stuck the cut end in the ground and walked away. I watered the bed a few times but not with any sort of regularity. A few months later, lo and behold, sweet potatoes. Not many but a few.
Your sweet yam potato leaves are lush and plentiful!!! Thank you. I am gonna get down and dirty and get a huge plant to grow my first batch. Woohoo thank you dear!!!
You mentioned that you cannot grow sweet potatoes from vine cuttings, but I proved that you can. After I harvested my first container crop, I decided to save some of the cuttings. I put them in water and they rooted. When the roots were about 6 inches in length, I planted them, and I now have my second crop of container grown sweet potatoes ready for harvest in about two weeks. I dug around in the soil yesterday and there are sweet potatoes in there. This was an experiment to see if I could use the vine cuttings, and it worked.
@@dryaddyad7757 I've seen no difference between vine cuttings and slips. As long as they are healthy, are planted in good soil and given the nutrients and moisture they need, they should do well.
Thanks so much for your great video - and all the printed info too! Wish I had known about your video before I tried to grow slips on my own. You seem truly happy and it is a joy to see your happy face.
I am glad to have found your channel. We have sweet potato videos that show how to make slips and then one on planting the slips to grow potatoes. You have such a great knowledge of how to grow sweet potatoes. Thanks for sharing.
Been growing sweet potatoes for 4 years and buying my slips. I've looked at other instructions but this was the best I've found! Great job! No more buying slips for me. Wife was tired of my water jars too. Will try dirt to grow next season.
oh I reeeeally LOVE your channel, yours is my favourite food growing channel and the first female I have come across doing this ;D you are so sweet , gentle and loving with your plants . I will be back and I am about to share this video on my Linked in account . Thank you wonderful lady ; )
I am glad you are posting this video ,I`m sweet potato farmers from Indonesia .. hopefully we can exchange knowledge and do business across the country ..
I am in southern california zone 10b. In my zone, they grow year round. The vines never turn yellow to indicate that it's ready to be harvested, instead I have to keep track of when I planted which one when, so I know when to harvest. Just before harvesting, I started new plants from vine cuttings and still get the tubers. I also found that the vines that just get harvested can be replanted and will produce some more tubers.
I was just looking at the video to find out how to regrow my plants I've never grown sweet potatoes but I have subscribed and absolutely loved how you walked us through very easily and very swiftly thank you for putting your opinions out here they helped many of us
I'm from southeast asia that sweet potatoes are common plants here. We plants lot of varieties of sweet potatoes. I love purple sweet potatoes. This year plant sweet potatoes use box. Hope I can success...
At 1:03 you said if you take a cutting from sweet potato vine and try to grow it won't produce sweet potatoes. That is news to me. I been growing sweet potatoes for many years. I always thought the vine will root in places along the ground where the dirt is on the vine and then there it will make more sweet potatoes. I don't really know thought because I trellis mine to grow the greens to eat and I keep trimmed so the harvest of the potatoes in the ground is usually nice size tubers but I always thought if I let the vine grow on the ground it would sprout more sweet potatoes from some vines rooting in the ground and making more tubers.
Great video! I just started my gardening channel and recorded my how to grow sweet potato vid, but haven't posted it yet. I usually do the water method, but it was neat to see your success with the soil method. Love that you understand and know about the manure from cows being GMO. Great seeing other fellow gardeners caring about their soil health. Loved this!
Ken Pecota(head of the sweet potato breeding program at NCSU) and also the university of Georgia sweet potato production guide both say that its not recommended to pull up the sweet potato slips out of the ground but to use a sharp clean knife and cut them off 1" above the soil line being careful not to let the knife or the cut slip touch the soil . This is because most of the disease is soil borne .Yes these rootless cuttings will grow slower at first but it more than makes up for it that they have no disease .have you ever dug up a sweet potato plant only to find rotten sweet potatoes? If so consider Ken's advise .
I just put some organic Garnet Yams in a square cooking pan (turkey baster thing) with soil today. I hope they produce slips. I also placed the pan on a heat mat set for 70. Maybe that will help speed things up?
Can you plant in Fall or winter outdoors in California and if you can what do you plant the sprout of the sweet potatoes or something else? Thanks for your time.
I loved hearing about the sweet potatoes I'll watch it again Do the sweet potatoes need to have sprouts to grow them when you want them to start P thank you for the information I'd appreciate it
Is there any problem to eat the last-year-harvested sweet potato (1:20...) from which you cut the tip with sprouts? Likewise, with the sweet potatoes you had missed harvesting and dug up the succeeding year (3:00...) - any problem with eating them? I've been thinking my best storage strategy in zone 9a might be to harvest periodically, so glad you mentioned doing that. And I have a garden area in which I planted two beds of sweets last year, then didn't harvest at all what with one thing and another, so they've had two years of growth - and overrun almost the entire garden! I definitely would like to think I can just continue to leave them in the ground and harvest some at a time. And a curiosity question: I've bought Okinawan 'purple'-fleshed sweets from local Asian Market and found them to vary in the degree of purple. But the last ones I bought a week ago have turned out to be entirely cream-fleshed. I buy those for the anthocyanins (same nutrient that blueberries have) and am not too happy about that, though I'll certainly eat them as they taste fine. Have you run into that before? Do you know why? what happened?
Sweet potatoes that are left in the ground for too long (1.5 years+) has the time to keep growing big, but they become more woody. Best to remember which vines were planted first and harvest in that order. Not every Sweet Potato has the same shade of purple. My guess is if your soil is rich with organic matter, there would be more nutrients for the tubers to take in so they produce more vibrant colors. Of the many types of purple sweet potatoes, I noticed the pigment in Okinawa sweet potatoes are the most inconsistent when purchased at the store. I shall see how mine is when it’s time for harvest!
@@wendiland Thank you for your reply. I rather suspected the oldest would become either woody or rotten; so all the largest that I find will be suspect, as well as those planted in the two beds. I may have better luck with those growing in the paths and unplanted beds. I expect I shall have to dig up all beds eventually, but since the two beds where I initially planted sweets are interior ones, I will need to start with the outer beds first. I had also bought several 'Japanese' sweet potatoes at Asian market, among them two _very large_ ones, which I cooked yesterday and have found to be rather fibrous, if not quite woody; so I suspect they were also older potatoes. Some of that variety were among my initial plantings -- which have had 2 growing seasons (not 2 years as I had stated). I watched yesterday a video of tips which suggested spacing plantings every two weeks of enough slips to supply two weeks' projected use so that one doesn't have to harvest all at once, maybe a good idea, thinking about it. On the other hand, old ones that might be woody can always supply slips for the next year, as can little runts that one might find too small to bother cooking. I know this is wordy, but hope readers might find something useful in all this verbiage. :-) Thanks again.
Do you know what happens, if you don't separate the slips? I've been sprouting a few potatoes via the water method and I'm thinking of keeping the results of the smallest one as houseplants.. so I don't really want them to develop tubers. I'm thinking of just potting up the whole potato and keeping it like that. Do you by chance know if that will work?
Remove all the leaves except for the tiny leaves at the very tip. Plant the cutting by covering the whole length with soil, only the leaves of the tip should stick out of the ground. The cuttings will root at every leave node. Not just the leave nodes under the ground will root. A sweet potato also grows roots from every leave node that develops as your cutting grows. If you can't get hold of cuttings you can start growing sweet potatoes by planting the tubers. You can use any shop bought sweet potatoes. Place them on the ground, cover them with soil, and keep them moist. The tubers will develop shoots, called slips. Slips can be snipped or pulled off and planted out when they are about 15 cm in size. The original root will continue to produce more slips. Growing Sweet Potatoes In Water It's a popular project in school classes: growing sweet potato vines in a glass of water. You can do that by putting a tuber into water, pointy end down, with the top third above the water. Slips will grow from the eyes of the tuber. You can plant those shoots out just like the slips grown in soil. Some people root the slips in water as well. It's nice to watch for children, but it has no benefit whatsoever. Rooting any plant in a glass of water does not make sense, other than for demonstration and teaching purposes. Planting Sweet Potatoes The best soil for sweet potatoes is sandy, but they can grow in all soils. If you have heavy soil plant sweet potatoes on mounds or ridges. Raising the beds improves the drainage (very important) and gives the tubers a nice deep soil to develop in. (Otherwise you may end up with small, bent and forked sweet potatoes.) The soil should have a good supply of nutrients, for example from digging in mature compost. Do not use fresh manures or any fertilizers high in nitrogen (like pelleted chicken manure). You'd just end up with lots of leaves and no tubers. Growing Sweet Potatoes Growing sweet potatoes requires some space, so plant them where they can spread. Space your cuttings or slips about a foot apart in a row, and leave three to four feet between rows. (If you plant in rows, that is...) Mulch thickly between plants and even between the beds to intially keep the weeds down. Once the sweet potatoes grow they will choke all weeds down themselves. For planting time the general recommendation is to plant a patch in spring. (May in the northern hemisphere, November in the southern). In a cool climate you may indeed have to get by with a single planting. Sweet potatoes do need four to six months of reasonably warm weather to mature. But in the tropics one big spring planting does not make sense, unless you are a commercial grower. Sweet potatoes don't keep well after harvest, so the best way is to plant a few cuttings every week or two. Just one row of one metre length, with three cuttings. They will take about 16 to 18 weeks to mature in warm weather, longer in cooler weather. That way you can grow sweet potatoes all year round, and you don't find yourself with a big pile of them all at once. Growing sweet potatoes the lazy way If you have enough room you can also plant a permanent sweet potato patch. I did. When I started growing sweet potatoes I didn't plant in rows. I have plenty of space, so I planted some sweet potatoes as a ground cover under most of my fruit trees. They did extremely well, and now my whole orchard is covered in sweet potatoes. They don't need any care, and when I want some sweet potatoes I can usually find a few there. I just look for a thickened stem, or walk around feeling for a lump, and start digging. It's too easy. (Read more about growing sweet potatoes permaculture style here. Soon.) How much water? How much plant food? Although sweet potatoes are a very tropical vegetable they can get by with little water once established. However, the freshly planted cuttings need to be watered regularly. Make sure plants don't become waterlooged. If your soil isn't free draining it's safest to grow sweet potatoes on mounds. If you think the quality of your soil is not good enough fertilize your plants at planting time, at six weeks of age, and maybe once more at twelve weeks. Or whenever you remember to do it... Just make sure you use a balanced fertilizer, for example seaweed extract. A sprinkle of sulfate of potash also doesn't go astray. Compost that had lots of wood ash in it is even better. Avoid high nitrogen fertilizers. Root crops like potassium and phosphorus, not nitrogen. Harvesting sweet potatoes After four to six months, depending on the temperatures, your sweet potatoes will be ready. You will see that the original stem of your cutting or slip will have thickened, and when you carefully lift the plant with a fork you should find two or three sweet potatoes at the base. You can harvest sweet potato leaves and young shoots at any time, it does not affect the plant or tubers. Problems when growing sweet potatoes In the tropics sweet potatoes have one serious pest, and that's the sweet potato weevil. An adult weevil is a metallic blue and orange and about 6 mm long. It eats everything, stems, leaves and roots. The weevils lay their eggs in the roots, and the larvae tunnel through the roots and make a rotten mess of them. If you have problems with sweet potato weevils you can't grow a permanent sweet potato patch. Just use the other sweet potato growing method. Plant slips or cuttings, that way you don't transfer any weevils. Dig up the whole crop, don't leave any tubers in the ground, and start afresh with cuttings in a different bed. That way weevils will never be a problem again. Return to top Return from Growing Sweet Potatoes to The Tropical Permaculture Garden Home What's New? What Is Permaculture? Permaculture Design Permaculture Plants Permaculture Books Growing Fruits Growing Vegetables Growing Herbs/Spices Homemade Fertilizer [?] Subscribe To This Site XML RSS Add to My Yahoo! Add to My MSN Add to Newsgator Subscribe with Bloglines Have you heard of the neem tree? The tropical tree has many uses and benefits, both in the garden and in the home. Learn more about growing neem trees, using neem pesticide, making neem soap, neem shampoo and more... Discover Neem!
Pamela Harripersad thank you for your thorough clarification of how to grow sweet potatoes. I would love to harvest the leaves for steaming. Would you recommend just putting some organic store bought sweet potatoes in a 7 gallon pot of organic potting soil and keep moist? For greater more sustainable production, do you recommend transferring the newly grown slips to other pots? Also have you ever grown these indoors? Thanks so much and have a beautiful joyous day ✨🕊😄
Thanks for the great info. It is May now and I have a store bought sweet potato that sprouted eyes and leaves. I plan on cutting off maybe the top third of it, and planting in a 5 gallon bucket of potting soil. Good to know to avoid the Nitroggen, as I also am planting tomato in a different pot and it love nitrogen, I think. It's my first time with any potato, just got the dirt and pots yesterday. So excited!
Terrific videos Wendi--you're an excellent teacher! I'm ready to plant some cuttings. Just one note==if you use organic manure you don't need to worry about the GMO feed concern-- :)
Hi Good Morning from India!! I love your blogging because of everyday I am learning something from you regarding on cultivation. I learn how grow our own veggies in our front yard or backyard. On top off everyday I am learning American English from you. Stay blessed and stay safe. 💓💓💓💓🌷🌷🙏
Thank you for your video! I buried a whole sweet potato that started growing slips but have been treating it like a "regular" potato for a few weeks until I saw your video (thank you!). I attempted to harvest the slips but it has taken root amazingly I'm the soil and I couldn't even find the potato. My question is now what? I am in no hurry for harvest but am unsure if I should thin them out or do I need to bury portions of the vines to get more potatoes? Help! They are growing great (over 10) but who knows what's going on under there? Thank you!
separate them as much as possible so they don’t get over crowded. each slip will produce a clump of tubers so they all ideally need space all around. Plant might go in shock when first separate them, but sweet potatoes usually are hardy enough to bounce back. good luck!
Hi, I live in Melbourne Australia, where the climate is not too cold during winter, we don't have snow. But summer can be very hot like these weeks (35°C and no rain for weeks). I submerged an organic sweet potato. It grows some roots, but no sprouts. Can I plant it in soil without the sprouts?
The e best harvest I've had is when I laid down clear plastic covering to heat the soil up. I previously used black covering. It's obvious why clear is better.
I purchased 4 different sweet potato slips varieties from ETSY. I'm in Virginia zone 7a. Here it's January 2023. The slips have lots of leaves and roots but since it's winter I have to keep them indoors. How do I do that and when should I transplant them outdoors after my last frost? Please advise!
I need your help. I’m in a very hot and humid area of North Carolina. My orange sweet potatoes are molding when I do either method, water or soil. I’ve been trying for months. What should I do?
@Daniel Chapman and you must also have a true close relationship with the Lord and to also walk in obedience , and holiness , do his will. Don’t forget that
I just watched your video and it was very interesting. I guess I did mine all wrong LOL. The part that I am a little confused on is when you removed the slips off the potato. So you take a potato and plant it and it gets all those little slips on it and then you remove all the slips and replant them? Am I understanding that right?
Yes that is all correct! You have to use the sweet potato to grow slips, then remove them so they become individual plants. :). Thank you for watching!
you can cut pieces of the plant to root again start over. If any roots in the ground did not get harvested will sprout new plants that can form tubers.
![Turn ONE Sweet Potato Into 100 LBS Of Sweet Potatoes By Growing SWEET POTATO SLIPS! [Complete Guide]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0igp5IzO21g/mqdefault.jpg)
Check out my updated videos on growing SWEET POTATOES! th-cam.com/video/DDct9rvUjms/w-d-xo.html
For those that don't know you can eat sweet potato leaves, they are comparable to spinach and many people grow them just for the leaves and not the SP to use in salads or as wraps like lettuce or anywhere you would use spinach.
Wow! Thank you! Gonna try 😁
in sinigang 🙂
Harvesting to much greens will result in less and or smaller potatoes though
We asean we love them
@@rbellionrises9851 just cut off some of the ends of the green shoots after a large amount of growth covers the ground. The vines will put out multiple growths at the end like trimming upright plants.
My grandpa gave me a cardboard box of sweet potatoes from his garden (to eat) but I left them in on top of my rain barrel for several weeks and forgot about them. When I discovered them I figured they wouldn't be any good but to my surprise, they had all grown some tubers. I had 8 of them so I made 8 mounds from my compost pile in a large circle about 20 feet in diameter. In a few DAYS, all of them had tons of leaves growing. They have been in the ground now a month and are growing out of control. The vines have run across the ground to the neighboring mound and have sort of connected. It looks really cool. I had no clue how to grow them but it seems like I did exactly the right thing.
A few weeks ago I bought a sweet potato at the grocery store. I kinda forgot about it. Then when I decided to eat it, it had shoots all over it. I was ready to pitch it but then I felt guilty and cruel because it had so many shoots. You can tell it was so determined to live so I planted it. :)
+dmarcus1260 Yay! You won't regret it when it's time for harvest. :) Sweet potato leaves are edible too! Checkout my other video on how to cook them. Happy Gardening!
This is the fifth video I’ve watched on growing sweet potato slips - going with this one.
Thanks!
This is the best video on growing so.
I would like to thank Wendi Phan for this great concise, quick moving video that explains HOW to cultivate sweet potato, sharing several techniques, as well as her clever suggestion that sweet potato can make an attractive ground cover with attractive flowers.
Great job, thanks for including all the info i needed in a concise way, and not burying the 4 important things in an hour long video of fodder and chat, keep growing! Keep teaching! You’re good at it!
Thank you. Happy Holidays to you!
THANK YOU IM A FIRST TIME GARDENER IM STOCKTON CALIFORNIA AND I JUST FOUND YOUR PAGE AND YOU MADE EVERYTHING SO CLEAR
This is the best sweet potato video I have seen on the internet. Yes, they are part of the morning glory family. I love morning glory 's. I planted scarlet one's this spring and waiting for them to soon bloom so I can take pictures of them as I do every year. You do a beautiful job. Thank you for sharing.🥰🌺
Thank you! That sounds fun! I always enjoy the flowers on mine too. I love the multipurpose of this vine. :D
Best video I have seen on planting sweet potatoes by far. Thank you!
Thank you. I’ve grown sweet potatoes from slips before, but never from the actual potato. Lot of people here in Hawaii grown them.
This is the very easy plants that I can planted on any kind of container . Yours grows healthy.
i was given a clipping from a sweet potato vine a couple years back. I basically stuck the cut end in the ground and walked away. I watered the bed a few times but not with any sort of regularity. A few months later, lo and behold, sweet potatoes. Not many but a few.
A harvest with little to no work is awesome! I love just how hardy they grow!
Fantastic video and so informative!!
Your sweet yam potato leaves are lush and plentiful!!! Thank you. I am gonna get down and dirty and get a huge plant to grow my first batch. Woohoo thank you dear!!!
Your video was very helpful. I had no clue as to how to plant this sprouted sweet potatoe that someone gave me. Thank you.
You mentioned that you cannot grow sweet potatoes from vine cuttings, but I proved that you can. After I harvested my first container crop, I decided to save some of the cuttings. I put them in water and they rooted. When the roots were about 6 inches in length, I planted them, and I now have my second crop of container grown sweet potatoes ready for harvest in about two weeks. I dug around in the soil yesterday and there are sweet potatoes in there. This was an experiment to see if I could use the vine cuttings, and it worked.
She's right, they can be propagated via vine cuttings.
Is one method more prolific, experimenters?
Chris SunRider yes, slips are more prolific
How long to get purple sweet potatoes or they’re all same .
@@dryaddyad7757 I've seen no difference between vine cuttings and slips.
As long as they are healthy, are planted in good soil and given the nutrients and moisture they need, they should do well.
Thanks so much for your great video - and all the printed info too! Wish I had known about your video before I tried to grow slips on my own. You seem truly happy and it is a joy to see your happy face.
Finally,someone who accurately showed obtaining slips etc. well done , thanks
That was so quick, simple and to the point with no BullShiite. Thank you for making this video. I subscribed.
I am glad to have found your channel. We have sweet potato videos that show how to make slips and then one on planting the slips to grow potatoes. You have such a great knowledge of how to grow sweet potatoes. Thanks for sharing.
That's wonderful! Will check them out sometime. There's always room to learn new things. :)
Wendi Phan I really like their videos!
Just jaydi
Too much long book.....
Been growing sweet potatoes for 4 years and buying my slips. I've looked at other instructions but this was the best I've found! Great job! No more buying slips for me. Wife was tired of my water jars too. Will try dirt to grow next season.
Glad you find it helpful! Depending on the sweet potato, some may take longer than others to sprout so be patient. :) Good luck!
I appreciate your video. Short and to the point. I didn’t have to watch a 10-20 minute video to find out what I needed to know.
Aloha from hawaii! Very informative video. Growing molokai sweet potato slips in 5 gallon buckets cause my garden bed is all full.
Very good, I enjoy watching your program. I learned a lot how to pant sweet potatoes. Thank you.
Great info, thanks Wendi! I was going to go the water route but soil seems better having listened to you.
oh I reeeeally LOVE your channel, yours is my favourite food growing channel and the first female I have come across doing this ;D you are so sweet , gentle and loving with your plants . I will be back and I am about to share this video on my Linked in account . Thank you wonderful lady ; )
Hope everyone is enjoying the rest of Memorial Day Weekend. Hope you enjoy my latest video. :)
Wendi Phan Will you have any of your purple sweet potato slips available on your web site?
Also, will you have the magenta plant this season?
I am glad you are posting this video ,I`m sweet potato farmers from Indonesia .. hopefully we can exchange knowledge and do business across the country ..
If you don't mind, I want to know what country is that?
abby manan Alfariz w
Wendi Phan is a
I am in southern california zone 10b. In my zone, they grow year round. The vines never turn yellow to indicate that it's ready to be harvested, instead I have to keep track of when I planted which one when, so I know when to harvest. Just before harvesting, I started new plants from vine cuttings and still get the tubers. I also found that the vines that just get harvested can be replanted and will produce some more tubers.
Yes same here in zone 10 south Florida. I've used vines that had flowers on them and got a lot of tubers. Maybe it's a zone 10 thing? 😂
Really good tips on growing sweet potatoes, thank you!
Thank you!!! This worked like a charm!!! 😁👌
Waaay more effective than the toothpick and water method!
I was just looking at the video to find out how to regrow my plants I've never grown sweet potatoes but I have subscribed and absolutely loved how you walked us through very easily and very swiftly thank you for putting your opinions out here they helped many of us
Really really good. Just what I needed to see about growing sweet potatoes.
WOW I had NO IDEA!!! Morning Glory Sweet Potatoes!! I am so excited to start!! Thank you!
Awesome! I’m going to plant my “slip” now!
Nice garden lots of bushes plants and good vibes
Lots of great information and nice presentation, thank you.
They have beautiful flowers too! Hade no idea.
I absolutely LOVE!! this video! Thank You for taking the time to create and share with us! Love ur channel!
Thank you, sweet, warm and beautiful Wendy.
I'm from southeast asia that sweet potatoes are common plants here. We plants lot of varieties of sweet potatoes. I love purple sweet potatoes. This year plant sweet potatoes use box. Hope I can success...
At 1:03 you said if you take a cutting from sweet potato vine and try to grow it won't produce sweet potatoes. That is news to me. I been growing sweet potatoes for many years. I always thought the vine will root in places along the ground where the dirt is on the vine and then there it will make more sweet potatoes. I don't really know thought because I trellis mine to grow the greens to eat and I keep trimmed so the harvest of the potatoes in the ground is usually nice size tubers but I always thought if I let the vine grow on the ground it would sprout more sweet potatoes from some vines rooting in the ground and making more tubers.
Never had luck,propagating in water but I was successful in soil. Thanks for the info.
I should have known you 3 years ago 🤠 but anyway good to see you today ! I'm in tx. Thank you for teaching.
You’re so knowledgeable! Thank you!!
Always glad to be helpful. Happy Gardening!
love your gardening energy! Feel-good gardening-Yeah!
Thank you! Plant, grow, harvest. Too much fun to see changes daily. :)
LEARN ALOT WITH YOUR VIDEO KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK AND RESEARCH.
Thank you so much for this video. I can't wait to get my slips! I started a sweet potato today! Thank you.
exciting!!
How did it turns out
Great video! I just started my gardening channel and recorded my how to grow sweet potato vid, but haven't posted it yet. I usually do the water method, but it was neat to see your success with the soil method. Love that you understand and know about the manure from cows being GMO. Great seeing other fellow gardeners caring about their soil health. Loved this!
Never grew sweet potatoes, the video was very helpful.
Ken Pecota(head of the sweet potato breeding program at NCSU) and also the university of Georgia sweet potato production guide both say that its not recommended to pull up the sweet potato slips out of the ground but to use a sharp clean knife and cut them off 1" above the soil line being careful not to let the knife or the cut slip touch the soil . This is because most of the disease is soil borne .Yes these rootless cuttings will grow slower at first but it more than makes up for it that they have no disease .have you ever dug up a sweet potato plant only to find rotten sweet potatoes? If so consider Ken's advise .
I just put some organic Garnet Yams in a square cooking pan (turkey baster thing) with soil today. I hope they produce slips. I also placed the pan on a heat mat set for 70. Maybe that will help speed things up?
Thank You ! Well done ! I'm using these techniques in my garden ASAP !!
thank you, Wendy. Enjoyable and instructional.
Thanks will try any tips on why my green bell peppers are not bearing fruit leaves and browns I take those out? Thx
Can you plant in Fall or winter outdoors in California and if you can what do you plant the sprout of the sweet potatoes or something else? Thanks for your time.
This is a very nice video. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
I loved hearing about the sweet potatoes I'll watch it again
Do the sweet potatoes need to have sprouts to grow them when you want them to start
P thank you for the information I'd appreciate it
No you can start any organic sweet potatoes by burying in soil. It will sprout.
Morning Glory Family!!! Thank you.
Omg thank you for this video! I realized I planted them wrong (buried too deeply) and immediately went to save them. Thankfully they're okay 🙌🏻
@Jason Padilla They did! Wish I could post photos on TH-cam. I had to make a trellis for it and its got vines growing everywhere.
@Jason Padilla Wish I could see what's going on underneath the soil but I gotta wait a few more weeks to find out
@@bethrivera867 It takes 90-120 days to harvest, depending on variety. (3-4 months of hot weather)
Is there any problem to eat the last-year-harvested sweet potato (1:20...) from which you cut the tip with sprouts? Likewise, with the sweet potatoes you had missed harvesting and dug up the succeeding year (3:00...) - any problem with eating them? I've been thinking my best storage strategy in zone 9a might be to harvest periodically, so glad you mentioned doing that. And I have a garden area in which I planted two beds of sweets last year, then didn't harvest at all what with one thing and another, so they've had two years of growth - and overrun almost the entire garden! I definitely would like to think I can just continue to leave them in the ground and harvest some at a time.
And a curiosity question: I've bought Okinawan 'purple'-fleshed sweets from local Asian Market and found them to vary in the degree of purple. But the last ones I bought a week ago have turned out to be entirely cream-fleshed. I buy those for the anthocyanins (same nutrient that blueberries have) and am not too happy about that, though I'll certainly eat them as they taste fine. Have you run into that before? Do you know why? what happened?
Sweet potatoes that are left in the ground for too long (1.5 years+) has the time to keep growing big, but they become more woody. Best to remember which vines were planted first and harvest in that order. Not every Sweet Potato has the same shade of purple. My guess is if your soil is rich with organic matter, there would be more nutrients for the tubers to take in so they produce more vibrant colors. Of the many types of purple sweet potatoes, I noticed the pigment in Okinawa sweet potatoes are the most inconsistent when purchased at the store. I shall see how mine is when it’s time for harvest!
@@wendiland Thank you for your reply. I rather suspected the oldest would become either woody or rotten; so all the largest that I find will be suspect, as well as those planted in the two beds. I may have better luck with those growing in the paths and unplanted beds. I expect I shall have to dig up all beds eventually, but since the two beds where I initially planted sweets are interior ones, I will need to start with the outer beds first. I had also bought several 'Japanese' sweet potatoes at Asian market, among them two _very large_ ones, which I cooked yesterday and have found to be rather fibrous, if not quite woody; so I suspect they were also older potatoes. Some of that variety were among my initial plantings -- which have had 2 growing seasons (not 2 years as I had stated). I watched yesterday a video of tips which suggested spacing plantings every two weeks of enough slips to supply two weeks' projected use so that one doesn't have to harvest all at once, maybe a good idea, thinking about it. On the other hand, old ones that might be woody can always supply slips for the next year, as can little runts that one might find too small to bother cooking. I know this is wordy, but hope readers might find something useful in all this verbiage. :-) Thanks again.
Your method of planting potatoes is simple and very popular in southern VN, and not like the lavish style of western farmers. Appreciate for sharing!
Thank you. Hope this method works for you too!
I had no idea that’s how you grew sweet potatoes.going to try this in our garden next spring.
Wow so easy and simple , thank you
Do you know what happens, if you don't separate the slips? I've been sprouting a few potatoes via the water method and I'm thinking of keeping the results of the smallest one as houseplants.. so I don't really want them to develop tubers. I'm thinking of just potting up the whole potato and keeping it like that. Do you by chance know if that will work?
Remove all the leaves except for the tiny leaves at the very tip. Plant the cutting by covering the whole length with soil, only the leaves of the tip should stick out of the ground.
The cuttings will root at every leave node. Not just the leave nodes under the ground will root. A sweet potato also grows roots from every leave node that develops as your cutting grows.
If you can't get hold of cuttings you can start growing sweet potatoes by planting the tubers. You can use any shop bought sweet potatoes.
Place them on the ground, cover them with soil, and keep them moist. The tubers will develop shoots, called slips. Slips can be snipped or pulled off and planted out when they are about 15 cm in size. The original root will continue to produce more slips.
Growing Sweet Potatoes In Water
It's a popular project in school classes: growing sweet potato vines in a glass of water. You can do that by putting a tuber into water, pointy end down, with the top third above the water. Slips will grow from the eyes of the tuber.
You can plant those shoots out just like the slips grown in soil.
Some people root the slips in water as well. It's nice to watch for children, but it has no benefit whatsoever. Rooting any plant in a glass of water does not make sense, other than for demonstration and teaching purposes.
Planting Sweet Potatoes
The best soil for sweet potatoes is sandy, but they can grow in all soils. If you have heavy soil plant sweet potatoes on mounds or ridges.
Raising the beds improves the drainage (very important) and gives the tubers a nice deep soil to develop in. (Otherwise you may end up with small, bent and forked sweet potatoes.)
The soil should have a good supply of nutrients, for example from digging in mature compost. Do not use fresh manures or any fertilizers high in nitrogen (like pelleted chicken manure). You'd just end up with lots of leaves and no tubers.
Growing Sweet Potatoes
Growing sweet potatoes requires some space, so plant them where they can spread. Space your cuttings or slips about a foot apart in a row, and leave three to four feet between rows. (If you plant in rows, that is...)
Mulch thickly between plants and even between the beds to intially keep the weeds down. Once the sweet potatoes grow they will choke all weeds down themselves.
For planting time the general recommendation is to plant a patch in spring. (May in the northern hemisphere, November in the southern). In a cool climate you may indeed have to get by with a single planting. Sweet potatoes do need four to six months of reasonably warm weather to mature.
But in the tropics one big spring planting does not make sense, unless you are a commercial grower.
Sweet potatoes don't keep well after harvest, so the best way is to plant a few cuttings every week or two. Just one row of one metre length, with three cuttings. They will take about 16 to 18 weeks to mature in warm weather, longer in cooler weather.
That way you can grow sweet potatoes all year round, and you don't find yourself with a big pile of them all at once.
Growing sweet potatoes the lazy way
If you have enough room you can also plant a permanent sweet potato patch. I did.
When I started growing sweet potatoes I didn't plant in rows. I have plenty of space, so I planted some sweet potatoes as a ground cover under most of my fruit trees.
They did extremely well, and now my whole orchard is covered in sweet potatoes. They don't need any care, and when I want some sweet potatoes I can usually find a few there. I just look for a thickened stem, or walk around feeling for a lump, and start digging. It's too easy.
(Read more about growing sweet potatoes permaculture style here. Soon.)
How much water? How much plant food?
Although sweet potatoes are a very tropical vegetable they can get by with little water once established. However, the freshly planted cuttings need to be watered regularly.
Make sure plants don't become waterlooged. If your soil isn't free draining it's safest to grow sweet potatoes on mounds.
If you think the quality of your soil is not good enough fertilize your plants at planting time, at six weeks of age, and maybe once more at twelve weeks. Or whenever you remember to do it...
Just make sure you use a balanced fertilizer, for example seaweed extract. A sprinkle of sulfate of potash also doesn't go astray. Compost that had lots of wood ash in it is even better. Avoid high nitrogen fertilizers. Root crops like potassium and phosphorus, not nitrogen.
Harvesting sweet potatoes
After four to six months, depending on the temperatures, your sweet potatoes will be ready. You will see that the original stem of your cutting or slip will have thickened, and when you carefully lift the plant with a fork you should find two or three sweet potatoes at the base.
You can harvest sweet potato leaves and young shoots at any time, it does not affect the plant or tubers.
Problems when growing sweet potatoes
In the tropics sweet potatoes have one serious pest, and that's the sweet potato weevil. An adult weevil is a metallic blue and orange and about 6 mm long. It eats everything, stems, leaves and roots. The weevils lay their eggs in the roots, and the larvae tunnel through the roots and make a rotten mess of them.
If you have problems with sweet potato weevils you can't grow a permanent sweet potato patch. Just use the other sweet potato growing method.
Plant slips or cuttings, that way you don't transfer any weevils. Dig up the whole crop, don't leave any tubers in the ground, and start afresh with cuttings in a different bed. That way weevils will never be a problem again.
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Pamela Harripersad thank you for your thorough clarification of how to grow sweet potatoes. I would love to harvest the leaves for steaming. Would you recommend just putting some organic store bought sweet potatoes in a 7 gallon pot of organic potting soil and keep moist? For greater more sustainable production, do you recommend transferring the newly grown slips to other pots? Also have you ever grown these indoors? Thanks so much and have a beautiful joyous day ✨🕊😄
Pamela Harripersad also when placing a potato from the store on the ground do you mean horizontally or vertically? Thanks again ☀️
Pamela Harripersad. Wow! Thanks for sharing!
What is a leave node or do you mean a leaf node Leave is a verb whereas leaf is a noun.
Thanks for the great info. It is May now and I have a store bought sweet potato that sprouted eyes and leaves. I plan on cutting off maybe the top third of it, and planting in a 5 gallon bucket of potting soil. Good to know to avoid the Nitroggen, as I also am planting tomato in a different pot and it love nitrogen, I think. It's my first time with any potato, just got the dirt and pots yesterday. So excited!
Just came across your video Wendi it was excellent
most informative, useful sweet potato video EVER!!!
FANTASTIC!!! Thank you for explaining...
Terrific videos Wendi--you're an excellent teacher! I'm ready to plant some cuttings. Just one note==if you use organic manure you don't need to worry about the GMO feed concern-- :)
Thanks for making this video. Very informative. And you're lovely.
Thanks for all information on sweet potatoes I will do this I am in Overlandpark, Ks
Hi. How do u know when the sweet potato is ready for harvest. Is it strictly by timing or the plant starts to die back.
Hi Good Morning from India!!
I love your blogging because of everyday I am learning something from you regarding on cultivation. I learn how grow our own veggies in our front yard or backyard. On top off everyday I am learning American English from you.
Stay blessed and stay safe. 💓💓💓💓🌷🌷🙏
Thank you for your video! I buried a whole sweet potato that started growing slips but have been treating it like a "regular" potato for a few weeks until I saw your video (thank you!). I attempted to harvest the slips but it has taken root amazingly I'm the soil and I couldn't even find the potato. My question is now what? I am in no hurry for harvest but am unsure if I should thin them out or do I need to bury portions of the vines to get more potatoes? Help! They are growing great (over 10) but who knows what's going on under there? Thank you!
separate them as much as possible so they don’t get over crowded. each slip will produce a clump of tubers so they all ideally need space all around. Plant might go in shock when first separate them, but sweet potatoes usually are hardy enough to bounce back. good luck!
@@wendiland how many potatoes does one plant?
Awesome video! Thank you so much for creating this! Looking forward to growing my first sweet potato, thanks to this video.
+SipsNTipsAdvice.com w/Karin That's exciting! Good luck! :D
Thank you!
Hi, I live in Melbourne Australia, where the climate is not too cold during winter, we don't have snow. But summer can be very hot like these weeks (35°C and no rain for weeks). I submerged an organic sweet potato. It grows some roots, but no sprouts. Can I plant it in soil without the sprouts?
Straightforward and useful. Thank you
thank you for watching! Happy gardening!
Awesome video! Answered all of my questions! Thanks!
Thank you 🙏 definitely trying this out next 👍
Bună . Anul trecut am plantat cartofi dulci si mi au mancat o rozatoare pe toti . Cum as putea preveni aceasta ?
Multumesc.
Beloved, growing your greens sent me here
The e best harvest I've had is when I laid down clear plastic covering to heat the soil up. I previously used black covering.
It's obvious why clear is better.
Thank you so much, of all the videos I had watch your is outstanding! Just what I need it to know. Thank you so much!
Great video it was very helpful. Going to apply knowledge early tomorrow morning, greetings from Trinidad
Very helpful video - thank you!
Growing sweet potatoes very good tutoring. J
So thankful for your teachings ....How do i like this video more
So good. I really like your video.
Thank you so much for sharing
Merry christmas 🌹🌹🙏🙏
How can find the sweet potato which I liked based on the leave design?
Thank you garden queen. 🥰 This was so helpful. ❤️
I purchased 4 different sweet potato slips varieties from ETSY. I'm in Virginia zone 7a. Here it's January 2023. The slips have lots of leaves and roots but since it's winter I have to keep them indoors. How do I do that and when should I transplant them outdoors after my last frost? Please advise!
I need your help. I’m in a very hot and humid area of North Carolina. My orange sweet potatoes are molding when I do either method, water or soil. I’ve been trying for months. What should I do?
never thought its as easy as that. cant wait to try. thank you for sharing. god bless u.
Your welcome bud.
@Daniel Chapman and you must also have a true close relationship with the Lord and to also walk in obedience , and holiness , do his will. Don’t forget that
This was great, dig these slips.
I see what you did there. good one.
Lovely presence, information, and heart, thank you. When the new sweet potatoes start to "peek out" of the soil , should i cover them with more soil?
No need, that’s the way some people grow potatoes, not sweet potatoes. You actually want vines to spread to produce more leaves for energy.
I just watched your video and it was very interesting. I guess I did mine all wrong LOL. The part that I am a little confused on is when you removed the slips off the potato. So you take a potato and plant it and it gets all those little slips on it and then you remove all the slips and replant them? Am I understanding that right?
Yes that is all correct! You have to use the sweet potato to grow slips, then remove them so they become individual plants. :). Thank you for watching!
once the grow do i pick and leave plant there and it will grow more??? or do I need remove what was grown from a vine and replace with new buds???
you can cut pieces of the plant to root again start over. If any roots in the ground did not get harvested will sprout new plants that can form tubers.
Very informative video. . I have some purple and normal sweet potatoes ready to do this. . thanks!
Hi did you cover the whole sweet potatoe in dirt thanks