Easy Way To Start and Grow Sweet Potatoes

 






For the past 3 years, we have grown sweet potatoes. It has been fun and easy..... and delicious. Another perk is that the leaves and vines are beautiful.




This was one of ours from the last couple of years.

 The first thing to do is to buy a sweet potato at the grocery store - an organic one is the best, but the one you see here came from the regular produce. I have found it best to choose a smaller one instead of a large one.

Cut it in half, or even smaller if you had to get a large one. Set it in water and keep it wet. They take a while to start sprouting, but once they do, they REALLY give lots of sprouts.

What fun that these grow so easily - I'm so glad that God made them this way!

 I leave it on the counter near the window so it gets some light. Mine never get any direct sunlight and I don't know if it would be a problem or not.... I just have them in a north facing window.

The one bowl has lots of new sprouts on the sweet potato, as you can see. The other bowl has the sprouts I have removed - they are in water to allow roots to grow.

 You can tell that they are a pretty plant, even just to grow for the greenery. :)

I enjoy plants and have some that are simply "pretty", but I especially love it when a plant can be both pretty and useful. I continue to be amazed by the variety of God's creation.

 The sweet potato itself will also develop roots. When I am ready to be done with the sprouting, I will also plant the sweet potato.

 Here are the roots growing in the  water.














When the sprouts get large enough, it is time to break them off and allow them to get roots. Sometimes they will develop roots while on the sweet potato also, but I have been pushing it to keep giving me more sprouts, so I am doing it
this way.

This one is big enough - time to remove it.

 This is the sprout I just removed from the sweet potato,

 Just put it into the bowl of water and leave it for several days or a week or two.... it will root.

Here it is in the bowl - to form roots.

 These are the other sprouts in the bowl. Most have already rooted, but I will leave them for a few more days until I am ready to plant them.... having extra time to develop more roots will give them a better chance to grow well when they get out into the bed.

 More waiting.... All they have to do is stay on the counter near the window. Check the water levels every few days and fill when necessary. You don't want them to dry out.

Here are the plants that are already growing in the bed. I planted these 2-3 weeks ago. These plants came off of the same sweet potato you have seen in the pictures above.

I will add the new plants, when they are ready, in between these and maybe in another bed.... IF I can find somewhere to put them. :) I have already shared that we have a city garden and are a bit limited on our space.

 The plants are growing nicely, but they would grow much better and faster if they had more sun.

 Another view.... when they start growing taller, they will look nice on a trellis.

 These are the 2 sweet potato beds from last year..... still not a lot of sun, but they grew. The top of the plant looks nice, but what is happening underground is a mystery until we dig in the soil to see.

 Here you can see some of the sweet potatoes in the ground.  Sometimes we have dug up a couple of the sweet potatoes and carefully removed them from the plant.... and then left the plants to keep growing.

Pretty amazing to see the swollen parts underground - that will taste so good!

 This is one of them - one of the average sized sweet potatoes.....

Two years ago, we had one sweet potato that was 14" long. One of our sons was pretty pleased with it.....and we all enjoyed eating it.... that one sweet potato was enough for all of us. :)

This is so good for the kids to see that food doesn't come from the grocery store, but that God provides what the plants need and they grow. He provides for us - whether we grow it ourselves, or we buy what someone else has grown. 

Here is part of our harvest from another year.

Two years ago, we had lots of sweet potatoes and they were quite large. Last year's crop was quite "twisty" and small.... they tasted good, but we liked the crop from the year before better.  What will this year's crop be like? We'll find out in several weeks/months.

If you haven't tried to grow sweet potatoes, it really is easy.... would be a great homeschool project even if you only end up with a houseplant to enjoy.  My family loves eating sweet potatoes and these had extra good flavor. The inside color was more intense than the outside color. Lots of good nutrition here.

One of our favorite ways to eat sweet potatoes is to just scrub them and bake them....like regular potatoes. When they are baked and tender, we cut them open and put butter and cinnamon on them. Yum. :) 

Thank you for visiting my blog..... I hope you will give this a try. Have a great week. :)

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