The sweet potatoes are making so many slips!
This evening I’m going to cut the potatoes so I can submerge the tops in water and get all those slips to root and hopefully get a good count on how many plants I’ll end up with. I will probably get about 6 potatoes from each slip. I would love to have at least 30 plants. That would give us enough sweet potatoes to be able to have sweet potatoes twice a week at meals and then still have enough leftover for pies and a few other sweet potato dishes.
I haven’t paid much attention to how many are growing there but I’m thinking there may be 30.
If I get them cut and back in water today, I could have enough roots to be able to plant them in cups by this time next week. I’m not going to try to plant them in the ground until our night lows are staying around 60 degrees or warmer. That’s usually at least Mother’s Day or maybe even the middle of May.
The sweet potatoes should mature by 90 days, maybe 100 days. If I leave them in the ground, they will get too big so I’ll start checking them at about 85 days.
I love growing sweet potatoes because we eat the leaves too. I try to keep the vines trimmed back to no more than 4′ because they will absolutely take over the back yard. When I prune the vines, I will save the leaves. We either eat them fresh (cooked mostly) or I’ll freeze dry them, then run them through the blender and use the powder in soups and gravies for added nutrition.