How to grow a sweet potato? The mistake not to make: Femme Actuelle Le MAG

Who hasn’t experienced the misfortune of forgetting a sweet potato in their pantry and finding it sprouted? This proves that this variety seems easy to grow, but what is it in reality? Do you want to source your own sweet potatoes? So go to the market and buy a sweet potato (preferably organic) and start multiplying it now. We’ll explain how to proceed, so you don’t make a mistake.

How to germinate a sweet potato?

There are three ways to start growing a sweet potato from another sweet potato. Here they are :

1. The slowest method but causing the least food waste is the method of using pieces of your sweet potato. First observe the appearance of your sweet potato, you see the rough spots, like a hair or a piece of root and forming a fold on its skin: these parts are starting points for germination. Cut 5-7 cm pieces of sweet potato around these points. Place them in an airtight container lined with absorbent paper soaked in water. Every week, open the box to add a little water and change the paper if it becomes moldy. After a month your sweet potato will have started to sprout.
2. Second method, that of the glass of water, the fastest, but the riskiest! Place one end of your sweet potato in a glass of water. After 15-20 days, the bottom of the sweet potato should have produced roots while the top will have sprouted.
3. Finally, last method, that of the whole sweet potato in the ground, the most effective. As Jacques shows, in a Tik Tok video, he positions his whole sweet potato, on a bed of potting soil, in an empty milk carton. After about two weeks, the sweet potato will have germinated but also developed roots.

How to grow sweet potatoes in water?

Growing a sweet potato in water is within everyone’s reach, whether you have a large garden area or not. To begin, at the end of winter or early spring start the process by purchasing a nice sweet potato. As we explained to you just above, it must be positioned in a container so that just one of its ends is soaked in water. It will thus develop its roots to draw in water, and at the other end germinate.

Trick : you can only grow the end of your sweet potato with this method, so you can eat the rest. To keep it at the right level, insert wooden toothpicks into each side.

The mistake not to make when planting your sweet potato

Originally from Virginia in the United States, Pawpawridgehomestead, his nickname on Tik Tok, gives valuable gardening and vegetable garden maintenance advice. And when it comes to sweet potatoes, he knows a thing or two!

If you have germinated your sweet potato as explained in the previous point, with the glass of water technique or the piece technique, and you are planting your sprouted plant in this way. Well you won’t get anything other than a plant! What you need to start a sweet potato plant is a cutting. Using method no. 3 mentioned previously, or that of the glass of water, you must take the sweet potato cutting, that is to say the sprouted part which is generally located at the top. If the sweet potato grew in water, you must then take the upper part and place it alone in another glass of water so that it in turn develops its own root system.

If you used the third methodnormally your sprouted part has developed with its root system, all you have to do is plant it in the ground in a container indoors, then take it out in the summer.

How to make sweet potatoes fat? When to pick it?

After the germination and cutting period, plant your sweet potato in a pot and let it grow. Then, transpose it into the ground, so that it grows. If you put it in the ground in the spring (the most cautious will wait for the ice saints to pass by), you should be able to harvest your sweet potatoes in the fall. For full maturity, allow 6 months, but depending on the climate and the mildness of the summer, they may be ready from 5 months. You know everything, now it’s your turn!