Starting sweet potatoe slips

I had almost forgotten to start sweet taters when I did all the other seeds last week. I could have been in a whole mess of trouble if I had not got sweet tater plants for the garden. We have 2 varieties of sweet potatoes, 1 is O'Henry and the other I am not sure of. Both heirloom varieties tho. The unknown one has deeper eyes and a lil drier flesh than the O'Henry's. Both are white as well. Everyone does sweet tater slips different but this is how we do it. Take a large pot, any flower pot will do, does not really have to be that deep. I filled the bottom half with shredded paper.

I used the paper because the pots were fairly deep and it would just be a waste of good potting mix.

Cover the paper with about 3 inches of good potting soil or potting mix. At this point you can dampen the soil or not, don't really matter.

Lay the sweet taters on top of soil and try to keep the upper surface of them kinda level. If they already have some sprouts, just leave em on there.

Cover the taters with soil mix and water them well. Keep the pots in a warm location with good light and keep the soil moist but not soggy.Soon you will see green leaves developing. It is OK if some of the upper surface of the tater can be seen, they will still send up sprouts or slips where ever there are eyes. Once the sprouts come out on the taters just leave them on the tater and in the soil. The slips will make roots due to the fact they are in soil. No need to break em off an pt in water to make roots. When the slips are 8 to 10 inches long tug on them to see if they have good roots. If they do an weather permits you can take the tater out of the ground and pull the slips off the tater and plant the slips. The tater is no longer useful so you can toss it.

I am really happy with my grape vine starts. This is only part of them, more beyond this at the end of the bench. The long bench that runs the length of the greenhouse is filled at this point and so is every other level surface in the place. So I should have plenty of seedlings for the garden.

I still have the raspberry plants my friend Rosie gave me in a container along with the rugosa roses. It has been too wet to get in the garden to plow and get them put out. It should dry up before long and then we will be very busy trying to get caught up as usual. But such is life on the farm.

Till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella