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This crop starts with a jar of water and toothpicks

Get sweet potato plants growing on your windowsill

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED FEB 5, 2021

Sweet potato sprouting in glass jar

This Garnet sweet potato has plenty of leafy sprouts and
pink roots. (Photos: Debbie Arrington)

Get going on your summer garden without getting your hands dirty. All these sprouts need is water, not soil.

It’s easy to grow your own sweet potatoes. In fact, you can start this favorite vegetable on your windowsill right now – without any seed.

Home gardeners can grow new sweet potato plants by sprouting a sweet potato tuber in water. All you need is a jar (with a mouth large enough to accommodate a sweet potato), toothpicks and a mature sweet potato.

The method is super simple: Stick the sweet potato in the jar. Position the sweet potato so that half of it will be below the jar’s rim (but not touching the jar’s bottom) and the other half above. Use three or four toothpicks stuck into the sweet potato to suspend it in that position. Fill the jar with water and place it in a sunny warm spot (such as a kitchen window). Then, wait. The sweet potato will start sprouting roots and leaves within two weeks.

It’s those leafy sprouts on top – called “slips” – that will become new plants. Let them grow out until they are at least 4 to 6 inches long. Each sweet potato will produce at least a half dozen slips.

When the slips are long enough, gently remove them from their mother sweet potato and root their stems in water, letting their leaves hang over the rim of a jar or dish. In mid-spring, those rooted slips will be transplanted into the garden or large pots outdoors.

In addition to giving you a head start on your summer garden, pretty sweet potato plants brighten your winter windowsill – and fascinate kids (and gardeners) of all ages.

In general, supermarket-bought sweet potatoes will work. The most popular varieties (all high yield) are Beauregard, Jewel and Garnet; they’re mild in flavor with yellow or orange flesh. Purple-fleshed Japanese sweet potatoes as well as white-fleshed sweet potatoes such as Hannah also can be started with this method.

First, remember sweet potatoes aren’t really potatoes; they’re members of the morning glory family. They even have trumpet-shaped flowers that look like lavender morning glories.

They’re also not “red yams.” That name was a century-old marketing gimmick to differentiate orange-fleshed varieties from the more common (at that time) white sweet potatoes.

Besides edible tubers, some sweet potato varieties such as Garnet also have edible leaves. (When cooked, sweet potato leaves taste similar to spinach.)

Sweet potato harvest

Since sweet potatoes like warm, loose soil, one way to grow

them is in a straw bale. These were harvested after growing at

the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in 2018. (Photo: Kathy

Sweet potato foliage comes in several different shapes, from simple hearts to deeply lobed five-point leaves. Like squash, varieties may be vining or bush.

A native of Central America, Ipomoea batatas likes it warm (75 degrees and up is ideal), but can’t stand frost. So, young plants are transplanted outdoors after all danger of frost and when air and soil temperatures have warmed sufficiently. In Sacramento, that will be some time in May.

Depending on variety, sweet potatoes take 60 to 90 days (or longer) to form tubers. They prefer rich, loose soil and consistent moisture (not too wet, but never totally dry).

But that crop all starts with a sweet potato in a jar of water.

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Keywords:

vegetable garden gardening Sacramento vegetables summer garden Fair Oaks Horticulture Center sweet potatoes sprouts plant propagation root vegetables

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Garden checklist for week of Aug. 16

During this break in the heat, feed your garden. Make sure to water before and after applying fertilizer.

* In the garden, direct seed beets, carrots, leaf lettuce and turnips.

* Plant potatoes.

* Harvest tomatoes, beans, squash, pepper and eggplants to prompt plants to keep producing. Give your plants a deep watering twice a week, more if planted in containers. Also, give them a boost with phosphate-rich fertilizer to help fruiting.

* Watch out for caterpillars and hornworms in the vegetable garden. They can strip a plant bare in one day. Pick them off plants by hand in early morning or late afternoon.

* Feed citrus trees their last round of fertilizer for the year. This will give a boost to the fruit that’s still small.

* Mulch can be your garden’s best friend – it conserves moisture while blocking out weeds. But don't let mulch mound around stalks, stems or trunks. That can promote rot.

* Camellia leaves looking a little yellow? Give them some chelated iron. That goes for azaleas and gardenias, too.

* Pick up after your fruit trees. Clean up debris and dropped fruit; this cuts down on insects and prevents the spread of brown rot. Then feed fruit trees with slow-release fertilizer for better production for next year.

* To prolong bloom into fall, feed begonias, fuchsias and container plants. Always water before fertilizing.

* Fertilize fall-blooming perennials, too. Chrysanthemums can be fed until the buds start to open.

* Prepare for a fall full of flowers by paying a little extra attention to your garden. Cut off spent blooms from roses, annuals and perennials, then give them a boost of fertilizer. Make sure to water plants before feeding. Roses will rebloom about six to eight weeks after deadheading.

* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.

* Sow seeds of perennials in pots for fall planting including yarrow, coneflower and salvia.

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