Help With Sweet Potato needed!

So I found a sweet potato starting to sprout in my cupboard and figured I could try to plant it in my community garden plot (note, I have never planted sweet potatoes before). I read somewhere that I needed to put it in water so I did and then promptly forgot about it (I have pretty bad ADHD and it was hidden behind my hoya). So now I have a sprouting and rooted sweet potato and no idea as to the best way to plant it! Do I need to cut it in half? Do I just plant it as deep as I can? Advice would be helpful! (if it helps, we're past our last frost date here so planting is not an issue, just how to do it!)

That is weird. Normally you have sprouts with roots emerging from the joint where the sprout comes from. You carefully separate the sprout, nodule, and roots in one piece (called a slip) from the tuber and grow that out in water.

I've never seen roots emerge at one end and shoots at the other. Then again, the usual method involves cutting up the tuber into pieces first (chitting).

I usually cut the top off, maybe an inch at most, and submerge the tuber in water whether it has anything growing or not. You can do the same. By leaving a bit of the tuber attached it will help feed the new slips until they grow roots of their own. Once they get good roots going you can split off the slips as mentioned above. It probably happened that way on you because the water level was below the sprouting part and growing roots there wasn't advantageous at the time.

You could probably pop the rest back in some fresh water and repeat the process. The only issue I have doing this is if I am not around to change the water the tuber chunk can start to rot. Even then you can cut off parts starting to get nasty, rinse it off, and put it back in fresh water. My sweet potatoes have been growing back on their own for a decade, they are tough as nails. You will likely have success with this, good luck!

The sweet potato you are holding in your hand is actually a storage root, not a tuber. It stores water and nutrients for the plant and is the part you eat. You no longer need it or the feeder roots at the other end. The reason it developed the roots at the one end is because that is the end that was in the water. The "slips" don't need roots, they will rapidly sprout nice fresh ones as soon as you remove and water them.

I like to cut the slip off about a 1/4 of an inch from the storage root but you could also just pull it off. At this point if it has some that's fine but it does not really need any roots all. Put it in water and very quickly it will sprout roots. Most plants need a well-developed root system to set out, but sweet potatoes don't. As long as it has a couple little root nubs starting to develop it is ready to go in the ground. Just keep it very well watered for the first three or four days. If a lot of long roots develop before setting out the plant will grow fine but it will not make as many nice new storage roots to eat.  If you plant the whole thing it will also grow fine but you will end up with huge amounts of new growth, and unlike a potato tuber the old root will not rot away. Instead of nice fresh new storage roots to eat that old one will just get bigger and nasty.

I said you do not need the old root anymore and you don't, unless you want more plants. If you just leave it in the water, once you remove the slips it will keep sprouting more. I see you are in Virginia in zone 7. In that climate you have another month or more to keep planting more slips if you want to.  

I tried planting something like this last year. I did just what Mark Reed described. Everything I put in my planter sprouted into very healthy vines.  I had such high hopes.

Then the squirrels ate everything right down to the soil.  Apparently the vines are edible, unlike potato vines.  It was pretty disappointing.  I have since made a cage from chicken wire and I am going to take another crack at it, and also try to grow the catnip again.  

Thanks y'all, I will definitely try the suggestion of cutting the slips! (And we have so far had not too many problems with mammalian pests, mostly insectoid, so hopefully the squirrels will keep well enough away).

I’ve got some going as well… you want to cut the shoot off and stick it in water. That simple. Here you can see how rapidly these things root, mine are just a couple days old. You can see the sweet potatoes brambling in the background…

I love how you chonked the entire potato into water… it does seem pretty logical at first.

I have created a monster of a sp vine...now what to do with it? Plant in soil? Hanging or in ground? It's taking over my kitchen!