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Hi, this is Sheridan Hanson with USU Extension.
I'm here today to show you how to start
an unusual crop for your Utah gardens
that actually do really well here,
and that crop is sweet potatoes.
They're very easy to grow.
You can see I've got one already started here,
and I've got several sweet potato baby plants over here.
So the idea behind this is that we have to-- sweet potatoes
require a long growing season, so we
have to accommodate that long growing season.
And even though our growing season in Utah
can be fairly short compared to what sweet potatoes need,
we can accomplish this by starting these early
in the spring in our homes.
What I need is an organic sweet potato.
You can pick one of those up at your local grocery store.
And the reason I say an organic sweet potato
is that some of the sweet potatoes that you purchased
that are not organic have been sprayed with growth inhibitors
so that they don't sprout while they're
sitting on the store shelf waiting
for you to purchase them.
So I picked up that organic sweet potato.
I placed it-- you can see I've just
got this baking sheet, one of those temporary little aluminum
foil baking sheets.
And I filled it with soil, just a general potting
mix is what I filled it with.
And then I placed the sweet potato about halfway
in the soil, just enough for it to be able to root.
I kept this moist, and I actually
covered it with some plastic wrap
while it was starting, just to kind of keep
the humidity in there and keep things moving.
And just like a potato, sweet potatoes have eyes.
And from those eyes, I get shoots or sprouts, what
we will eventually call a slip.
And I wait for these slips to grow.
And as they get long, I'm going to come out to my sweet potato.
And I'm going to pull them off, just very simply pull it off
of the plant.
Let's do a couple of these.
And I'm going to take the longest ones.
I want them to have some good length on them
so that they can start some roots.
So this is what we call a sweet potato slip.
I've got a little glass of water here.
I like to use a clear glass so that I can
see what's kind of going on.
And after I pull these off of my plant,
I'm going to put these right in my glass.
I'm going to put this in a sunny location.
I usually put it in my kitchen window sill.
And I wait, and I watch.
And after a few days, you'll start
to see roots forming on my sweet potato slips.
Once these are rooted and they have these roots forming,
I can transfer these.
Oh, this one's really good.
That one's got a lot of good growth on it.
I can transfer these to a soil-based pot.
So instead of the water, now we're
going to switch back to soil.
I have these peat pots that are fairly large.
There are 4 inch pot.
And the reason I'm picking such a large pot
is these guys are going to need some good area to put
some roots down in.
I'm going to fill these pots with my general potting mix
that you can pick up at the nursery.
Oops.
Just put some of that soil in there.
And I'm going to fill it to the top,
because when I water it, like what I've done with this one,
you can see that that potting mix kind of sinks
down just a bit.
And then this is really simple.
I'm going to make a little indent with my finger.
I'm going to put my sweet potato slip in,
and I'm going to backfill it so that those roots are covered.
Then I'm going to water this in.
Place this on my tray with my other sweet potatoes
and place this under a grow light
so that I know they're getting ample amount of light.
I will check the water on these daily.
These guys don't like to dry out.
So make sure that they are well watered, but not over watered.
If you have water sitting at the base of these plants,
you will have some root rot problems.
And when it's May, about May 15 along the Wasatch Front,
I'm going to transplant these out into my garden,
and I'm going to have a marvelous sweet potato
harvest later in the summer.
Thanks for joining me.
Hope you are able to start some sweet potato
slips on your own, and happy gardening.
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