Time to plant sweet potatoes?
- Thread starter DrMike27
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ASAP It's already a tad late for 9b. They are warm/hot weather plants. Get a super sharp knife and slice off each slip with a little bit of the potato skin and meat. Just a little bit, plant and keep moist.
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Good looking slips. Your area is ideal. I grow in 5B and the season is usually a bit too short. Leave them in the ground as long as possible, I am limited by frost probably the end of September. I cut the slip leaving a bit of the mother potato. They are great survivors and spread out considerably. Mark the seed slip so you can dig at the center of the mass in a few months. Rabbits love them so if you have some put a fence around the bed.
DrMike27
Trust me...I’m a doctor.
Luckily, I have a wall enclosing my backyard, so no 4 legged creatures. You’ll see angry Mike come out in the fall when I overseed my grass and the rats with wings swarm my yard though.
When you say, ‘Mark the seed slip...’ what do you mean?
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Put a stake marking the slip for later finding. The vegetation takes over and the harvest is around the seed slip in about a foot diameter. A good crop is around 5 pounds from one slip. You may get more being in a warm 9 zone.
Curious where you all get slips? I can only find starter plants or bare roots and they seem to be slow starters. We will see at harvest time I guess, but I'd love to find slips (seed potatoes?).
DrMike27
Trust me...I’m a doctor.
I just grew mine from a store bought sweet potato. Cut them in half and put them in water.
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http://durgan.org/May 2019/5 May 2019 Sweet Potato Slips/HTML/ 5 May 2019 Sweet Potato Slips
Sweet potato slips were produced from a purchased supermarket tuber. The potato was placed in water,and light and allowed to grow for about a month. They were then placed in a growing pot and will allowed to grow for about a month. They will be about 4 inches high and then will be planted outdoors when it is warm about 24 May in my area, Zone 5. Even these small slips will grow without further pot growing. I expect 3 to 5 pounds from each plant depending much upon warm weather. Harvest is late Fall.
Sweet potato slips were produced from a purchased supermarket tuber. The potato was placed in water,and light and allowed to grow for about a month. They were then placed in a growing pot and will allowed to grow for about a month. They will be about 4 inches high and then will be planted outdoors when it is warm about 24 May in my area, Zone 5. Even these small slips will grow without further pot growing. I expect 3 to 5 pounds from each plant depending much upon warm weather. Harvest is late Fall.
Good to know, I wander if these will produce better than bare root starters?
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Any slip grows. Basically a slip is a bare root.The slips grow slowly at first then they want to take over after getting established. When I grow the slips I leave a bit of the mother potato, for no good reason.
