One of my favourite vegetables is the sweet potato. My guess was that these should grow easily like a potato. When my kitchen scraps include bits of potato I am guaranteed after a time to see new leaves coming through the mulch under which I empty those scraps, then weeks later a bountiful harvest can be collected. But rather than guessing about the situation with sweet potatoes, I thought it best to google and read helpful hints. Thankfully I did so. The first video I watched showed me the error in my thinking.

When you watch the video below you will learn two month old slips need to grow – slips seems to be the technical name for sprouts, which eventually lead to the growth of roots – before planting in the ground. On that basis and still in winter, I have started the process described in the video with the expectation of planting in mid-October when the weather is milder. I will start another tuber-like ‘log’ of sweet potato on the same process in a month’s time then expect to plant that one in mid-November. By so doing I can learn about the best timing for future years.

In the photos below you can see I have looked at my sweet potato and have identified the ends so that when I placed it into the glass, the pointy end was uppermost.  Initially I used three toothpicks like in the video but these were insufficient to bear the weight. Now there are many circling the body of the sweet potato.

I look forward to showing you the roots at planting time, and then relaying any successes (or failures) in the subsequent weeks.