growing sweet potato

planting potatoes

The good news is this: growing sweet potato is not hard at all! Sweet potato is a very popular food�not just at holiday meal times, but throughout the year. Some restaurants have even turned sweet potato French fries into a sought after snack food! Because you love sweet potatoes, you are probably interested in learning about sweet potatoes growing for yourself.

Here is what you need to know about how to grow a sweet potato.

1. Growing sweet potatoes works best when you have a long warm season. If you live in a colder climate, you might want to look into heat lamps or green houses to help your sweet potatoes grow.

2. Sweet potatoes plant grows on vines and takes root at the nodes that are along those vines. There are also "bush" sweet potatoes that grow on shorter vines and are ideal when your growing space is limited.

3. Sweet potatoes plants can be grown in the ground, in containers or even in hanging baskets. You can even grow sweet potatoes from bottles of water that sit in your kitchen!

When growing a sweet potato, your best bet is to look for a sweet potato that has already begun to sprout. This means that it is ready to start growing and will save you a lot of time and stress (nobody likes to wait a month for a vine to sprout only to have the vine die). When you get the sweet potato home, assemble the following materials: a glass jar, some wooden toothpicks, potting soil and a flowerpot (though you can wait a little while to get the flower pot. You won't need it until later).

When your materials are assembled, the next step to growing sweetpotatoes is to stick two toothpicks into the sides of the sweet potatoes and put it over the jar. Pour lukewarm water into the jar until the jar is almost full and then put the jar in a window where it will be sure to see a lot of sunlight. Be sure that the root of the sweet potato faces down. It will take one to two weeks for your sweet potato to sprout. The first signs of this are little rootlets growing on the part of the sweet potato that is in the water. After a couple of weeks the top of your sweet potato plant will start to grow very quickly, first sweet potato vines and then more sweet potatoes from that vine.

When your sweet potato reaches about six inches in height, you will want to transplant it from the water jar to the flower pot. Fill one third of the flower pot with potting soil. Put the growing sweet potato on top of the soil and then fill more potting soil in around it. Make sure it is completely covered or it might rot. Water the plant often to keep it moist and enjoy the sweet potatoes it produces! Growing sweet potatoes is now something you will be able to do every year for years to come!

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