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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

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.)

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

Morrison)

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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Food in My Back Yard Series

April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)

April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers

April 8: When to plant summer vegetables

April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths

March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth

March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space

March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds

March 4: Potatoes from the garden

Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later

Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space

Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants

Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting

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Garden Checklist for week of April 27

Once the clouds clear, get to work. Spring growth is in high gear.

* Set out tomato, pepper and eggplant transplants.

* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, radishes and squash. Plant onion sets.

* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias. Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.

* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom. Late April is about the last chance to plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.

* Transplant lettuce and cabbage seedlings.

* Weed, weed, weed! Don’t let unwanted plants go to seed.

* April is the last chance to plant citrus trees such as dwarf orange, lemon and kumquat. These trees also look good in landscaping and provide fresh fruit in winter.

* Feed citrus trees with a low dose of balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) during bloom to help set fruit. Keep an eye out for ants.

* Apply slow-release fertilizer to the lawn.

* Thoroughly clean debris from the bottom of outdoor ponds or fountains.

* Start thinning fruit that's formed on apple and stone fruit trees -- you'll get larger fruit at harvest (and avoid limb breakage) if some is thinned now. The UC recommendation is to thin fruit when it is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Peaches and nectarines should be thinned to about 6 inches apart; smaller fruit such as plums and pluots can be about 4 inches apart. Apricots can be left at 3 inches apart. Apples and pears should be thinned to one fruit per cluster of flowers, 6 to 8 inches apart.

* Azaleas and camellias looking a little yellow? If leaves are turning yellow between the veins, give them a boost with chelated iron.

* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.

* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.

* Mulch around plants to conserve moisture and control weeds.

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