how to start sweet potato slips

08 Apr 2011 5 Comments

Sweet Potatoes, Onions…

We’ve got them all! Or will have. This week the kids learned how to make sweet potato slips, the process many gardeners use for starting thier sweets in the garden. Simply cut them in half, suspend them in water and wait until your potato grows long, stringy roots. Done.

I imagine this method was developed for nothern gardeners as a way to give these sweets a head start on the season. Important, considering sweet potatoes require 100-140 days to mature. Heck, that’s longer than the entire warm season in some parts of the country! Poor things.

Here in Florida I’ve discovered these babies can re-sprout themselves in ground with no help from me. Reassuring. Forget to harvest all your bounty? You too, will have sweet potatoes sprouting anew. (I do love an easy vegetable.) It makes them the perfect candidate for growing over summer break. End of May, we plan to tranplant our slips into the garden and bid them adieu.

Meanwhile, we harvested our purple cauliflower along with a doozy of an onion. Get a load of this pumpkin (term of endearment)!

He’s a beauty, isn’t he? The kids were quite excited, despite the fact many won’t allow the sweet thing anywhere near their plate.

Until I change their minds, that is. Next week we’re headed for the kitchen and I’m going to prove to these kids that growing your own vegetables DOES make them taste better. Have you ever tasted a sweet onion, fresh from the garden? No tears, no tarts, they are pure melt-in-your-mouth butter and honey. We’ll try ours raw and baked, some sprinkled with a bit of brown sugar, others a bit of Gruyere. Yummmmm… Can’t you just taste them?

As usual, there’s the job of weeding and maintenance but when the girls get together, there’s no stopping them!