Growing sweet potato slips from Grocery store sweet potatoes - any luck?

Hello,

I purchased some grocery-store sweet potatoes and have hopes of getting them to produce slips.  I know that they are either commercially  treated with heat or something else to keep them from sprouting, but I see youtube videos saying that you can do it.  Almost all videos show only the first steps of getting the sweet potatoes started and then that's it. No follow-follow up. Not much written content either. Only one video shows plants that were started earlier, but the way that the guy words what they are makes me wonder if the potatoes actually came from a commercial supermarket.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any success doing this?  Did you have to do anything special or out of the ordinary to accomplish your results?
If you had absolute failure I especially would like to know about this too.  :)

These sweet potato tubers are totally of the commercial, non-organic variety.  No sprouts visible anywhere....only eyes.

Thanks for any help or ideas.  I already have (of course) purchased and moistened the potatoes in a warm environment just to get a head start.

Hope that you all are having a great day.  Thank you.
Tim

I bought 6 sweet potatoes this year, stored them in various locations and none of them have sprouted.

This thread indicates that better to use sweet potatoes that are a little over a year old to produce slips.

https://permies.com/t/171732/perennial-vegetables/Sweet-potato-propagation

This thread is interesting:

https://permies.com/t/17569/sweet-potato-propagation-harvest

I've done that a number of times. The first time the tuber rotted. 2nd, I put it in soil rather than water and got lots of sprouts. I have done the water method since then, both with store purchased SP and with descendants of store purchased SP, and got sprouts from both.

If you want to try, start them NOW, as any growth inhibitors take a while to wear off. If you decide to do the water method, try to identify the "root" end and put it down in the water. If you put the sprout end in the water it's more likely to rot, although you may get sprouts anyway.

You can also buy the sweet potato leaves--if they have been broken off at the base, they'll still sprout roots although I'm not sure if you'll get any tubers that way. Those I started this way and planted all died because I forgot to water them.

These plants are STRONG, and short of baking I don't think anything the producers might do will kill their ability to sprout completely.

I grow slips from non-organic grocery store sweet potatoes every year, never had a problem once I figured out a method that works best for me.  The only things I do is spray mist the half buried tubers once or twice a day with plain water, and make sure the soil stays moist but not saturated (the misting usually maintains the proper soil moisture).  The soil I use is a 50/50 mix of my own soil (sterilized) and ProMix to make a light texture.  Two tubers produce far more slips than I can possibly use but I am a person who believes in always doing backups when practical.

I had great results using a store bought organic Stokes purple sweet potato in a shallow microgreens tray that I bottom watered.  Anne provided a link in her post above.  Here it is again, https://permies.com/t/17569/sweet-potato-propagation-harvest  
The last few replies to that thread I show them in the tray growing slips, and the harvest I got at the end of summer.  I'm going to do the same thing again this year.   My climate is full sun all summer, dry (humidity in the low teens), and 105f'ish most days from mid June through mid September.

As a side note, I had almost zero pest damage with the purple sweets.  The other types always get sow bug damage or other deformities.  They're still good, but I end up having to cut a bunch of bad spots off of them when I go to eat them.   The purple grow nicely, and just need a brushing off before cooking.  

About a year ago, I bought two different sweet potatoes at the market, cut them in half and suspended each half in water. The bottoms of the roots didn't produce much slips. The tops did. But one of them rotted and got gross while the other one just chugged away. And the slips I grew thrived much better than ones I ordered from Sand Hill.

Thank you Anne, Lauren, Tom, Joshua and Christopher!

I really appreciate all of the comments, advice, links and pictures.  All have been very helpful.  I purchased purple sweet potatoes and plan to use the advice that you've all given.  

The people of this forum are some of the best ever. I appreciate you all.

Thank you again.
Regards,
Tim

Just posting to let you all know that I had success!

I didn't get to follow any advice per-say.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?)  I decided to put my tubers in water and sit them on top of the furnace in our furnace room just for a possible jump start while I rounded up potting soil and planters over the upcoming couple of days.  I ended getting pretty sick and only today was able to go and check on the damage.  Surprisingly all three of my tubers have a ton roots that are about 6 inches long  and all have several eyes that are starting to develop slips!

Went to the supermarket and bought two more....$2.79 a pound!  I bought small ones that amounted to less than a pound.  I intend to hold out and hope that they go on sale soon because no one seems to be buying them and a lot of them seem too small for cooking.

Not the way that I had wanted to do it, but I guess that I'm glad that I did.....I still don't have anything ready to plant the tubers in but I guess that I'd better get moving.  :)

I intended to post pictures if I was successful, but honestly they don't look too photogenic right now.   I had hoped to show you plants growing in pots.  Maybe I'll let them grow for a while and then post pictures.

Thank you again.
Take care.
Tim

I don't remember if I took any pictures, but last year I harvested sweet potatoes from sweet potato slips, and those slips came from a grocery store sweet potato.

The method I followed was I inserted four toothpicks around the middle of the sweet potato, and used those to hold the sweet potato in a cup (so half is below the rim of the cup and half is above the rim).
After that, I filled the cup with water to near the top and added more water whenever it started to reach the bottom of the sweet potato - ensuring that the sweet potato always had access to water.
I placed the cup in a west-facing windowsill, and it took a while but eventually five slips appeared. I let them grow for a bit, then cut them off with a serrated knife and placed them in a glass with a bit of water so that they would root, just like any other cutting.
Once they started to form roots, I took my five slips and placed them directly in soil outdoors. Only the three largest ones made it, although I suspect the smaller two would have grown fine if I gave them some protection or had hardened them off beforehand.

Once winter (and frost) started to approach, I dug up the plants, composted the vines, and enjoyed the sweet potatoes. The plants were still very healthy at that point, but I do not believe they would have survived our winters.

If I can find any pictures I took, I will share them here.

I did not find any pictures I took of the slips or the vines after they were planted, but I did find a picture of part of my final harvest. This was all from one plant that was planted in a bare patch of very tough clay soil, with no amendments of any kind.
There were more sweet potatoes further underground, but I could not dig them up - and you can see that even these had some slight damage from where I was trying to get them out of the clay.

Last spring my kids were on a sweet potato eating kick and I was just keeping a pile of them from the supermarket on the counter. When two of them sprouted, I cut off the leaves and stuck them in water until they had long roots and then planted those in a raised bed. I only got a handful of pencil thin tubers but my climate is not known for growing sweet potatoes so I feel encouraged to give it another try with special shorter season varieties.

Just thought I post an update on my sweet potato slips.  Growing nicely!  Planted more using the advice that you all gave me here.  Thank you. Have a good day!

Here's my grocery store sweet potatoes that sprouted before I could eat them. The giant one probably won't do well in my climate but the small one is a different variety. Maybe it would do better. I got some tiny purple ones I was hoping would sprout but they disappeared off my counter. 🤷

Sure have. I got mini sweet potatoes from a grocery and dropped them butt down in some cups of water. When they started to grow I looped some black twist ties around one and hung it on the side of a fish filter in my palludarium and let it grow aquaponically. They can't reproduce new tubers that way but it grew a good 3' vine (and a few shorter ones) that twined around my tank and lived for about 5 months and needed regular pruning. Eventually the tuber itself rotted away and the plant died but it certainly grew and I'm considering a repeat of the experiment because I liked the plant itself in the tank.

My understanding is the organic ones almost always do better, fyi, and what I bought were organic ones.

We’ve had success with store bought sweet potatoes many times! We are in South Africa, so almost none of our produce is organic. We actually have a bunch of sweet potatoes in small pots making slips right now. It’s such a fun way to grow them.
If you’re interested, we do have a few YouTube videos on the subject, and we’re about to do an update as well.
 [youtube]https://youtube.com/channel/UCqoFkvog9j2KTyUQgdpmY9A[/youtube]  

I accidentally found a much easier way… I had a sweet potato that had started to sprout eyes and a couple of tiny leaves.  I dug a hole in an unused part of my garden and dropped it in- covered w ~2-3” of soil.  Figured if it rotted? Was compost:) But have now vines going like crazy- came here to see if I could cut the vines to make slips to plant in other areas (seems I can so will give it a shot!)

I haven’t dug in the area to see if any new SPs are in the ground- assuming there are- but yeah- I just plopped the whole thing in the ground!

Hi, Rachel, welcome to the forum!

Maybe some will be able to answer your question.

Why not try experimenting by clipping some of the vines and try rooting them in water?

I bet you will have success.

Hi Rachel,

Welcome to Permies.

Yes:) I clipped off most of the sprawling vines- did the usual snapping off all leaves but the end one- trimmed the ones down where the last leaf was larger…. Loosely tied longest together, and medium lengths together.  Those in 5 gallon bucket of water.  Shorter ones in a vase w water.

Did that right after I posted a couple days ago… I’m sure they’ll grow a few roots then in the ground they’ll go!

Prob could just have planted them straight away.  I live in S FL zone 10a.  Most cutting things will grow well, just put right back in the garden.  If they were happy here in the first place.  Thanks for the replies! Xoxo

This is my first ever year gardening and was planning on making some nice compost, so I had been tossing all of my fruit and veggies scraps into a composted. The last thing I had added were some old potatoes from the grocery and some dirt (Kelloggs garden soil) to help it all grow and then when I opened it todump after a week or so I had a million sprouts. My garden is already full of other veggies so, I'll be making another raised bed tomorrow.  I personally think the heat of the compost bin and the moisture from the dead veggies made them root. Hope this helps someone.

That's great John! Please post some pics of your progress.

Welcome to Permies!!