You can just snap the shoot off at the potato and plant it out in moist soil
It will collapse for a bit but keep it damp and it will grow roots.Don't worry if it looks like it is going to die it wont just keep it moist.

You shouldn't have a problem with that in Ireland.

Worth

[QUOTE=Worth1;644838]You can just snap the shoot off at the potato and plant it out in moist soil
It will collapse for a bit but keep it damp and it will grow roots.Don't worry if it looks like it is going to die it wont just keep it moist.

You shouldn't have a problem with that in Ireland.

Worth[/QUOTE]
Hahaha that's true! :))

Great info Worth. I actually sprouted a sweet potato from the grocery store. No idea what it is. I planted them up in the high tunnel where it is warm all day long. Hopefully it will be a good crop. I planted a castor bean right at the end to repel voles and moles before I even put the slips in. Never have I grown sweet potatoes.

All of my sweet potato crop is from grocery store potatoes and stuff that survived the winter underground.
I broke the vines up and planted them.
Then as they grew I buried the vines, each place they take root will be more potatoes.
Worth

Short season areas will get better tuberization if you discourage rooting along the vines.

[QUOTE=Nematode;644881]Short season areas will get better tuberization if you discourage rooting along the vines.[/QUOTE]

These vines have been growing for some time now.
Most people start sweet potato slips in the Austin area in May and at the very end of May is when I stopped rooting vines.
I really like vines of all kinds and have since I was a small child.
Now I am a big child and still like vines.:)
Mine haven't even come close to how much vine they will make before the end of summer.
Plus you can eat the leaves.
Worth

[QUOTE=Nematode;644881]Short season areas will get better tuberization if you discourage rooting along the vines.[/QUOTE]

so, should I put a trellis above the vines to keep them off the ground? I have a nylon cuke trellis that I can re-appropriate for the sweet potatoes.

You can trellis, but moving them occasionally so they don't root is ok too.

As far as I know I have never seen a sweet potato climb on its own.
It has no tendrils and wont spiral like a bean vine.
It just moves along the ground up down and over stuff.

Worth

[QUOTE=Worth1;644932]As far as I know I have never seen a sweet potato climb on its own.
It has no tendrils and wont spiral like a bean vine.
It just moves along the ground up down and over stuff.

Worth[/QUOTE]

like I said... I have never grown them, never even thought about whether they had tendrils or not.. duh.
Thanks Nematode. stupid question obviously.:oops:

Sweet potato vines will climb. I grew some a couple of years ago in a bed where I was also growing peppers and the sweet potato vines grew up the rebar I was using to stake my pepper plants.

[QUOTE=whistech;644966]Sweet potato vines will climb. I grew some a couple of years ago in a bed where I was also growing peppers and the sweet potato vines grew up the rebar I was using to stake my pepper plants.[/QUOTE]

From reading some do better than others and some need help and so on.
The web is full of people asking this same question.

We had some growing next to a fence and they never climbed and that is the only input I have to offer.
Right now I am trying to train some to climb.

How did yours climb did they twist around the rebar like a bean?

Worth

Sweet potatoes are related to morning glory, in the genus Ipomoea. Those vines go on forever. I found the vines never rooted and all the forming potatoes were in about a two foot diameter of the planted slip. Mind you growth is checked by frost in my relatively short season. I use last year's crop for new slips or if I find a particularly attractive supermarket potato, I grow slips from that.

This was my 2016 crop.

[URL]http://durgan.org/2016/September%202016/15%20September%202016%20Sweet%20Potato%20Harvest/HTML/[/URL] 15 September 2016 Sweet Potato Harvest
My ten sweet potato plants were harvested. This is my first attempt at growing sweet potatoes under reasonable conditions. Eight of the plants were from slips purchased from a site on the internet. Two purple ones were from slips from a supermarket grown by myself. The supermarket slips were longer growing hence accounts for their larger production. The total weight was 31.5 pounds from ten plants or an average of 3.15 pounds per plant. With good growing conditions extrapolating my results an expectation from each plant would be about 6 pounds in a home garden. All the new tubers were centered around the planted slip in a diameter of about 12 inches. The vegetation covered a very large area and was very healthy. It was removed before digging the tubers. Some of the tubers were disfigured by an insect or rodent. This was simply cut away. The tubers were placed in a hot greenhouse and will be allowed to cure or condition for about ten days, then stored in my root cellar. One tuber was baked and is shown with these pictures. It was most pleasant to eat.
[IMG]http://durgan.org/2016/September%202016/15%20September%202016%20Sweet%20Potato%20Harvest/HTML/dsc_349215%20september%202016%20sweet%20potato%20harvest_std.jpg[/IMG]

Okay here is the deal, I have slips from the same potato growing in three different places.
Some are up front and I have tried to get them to wind around some wire and they just pass it up like it isn't even there.
In another spot there is a wire hanging down from a fence I grew runner beans on last year.
This darn sweet potato vine took off towards that wire about 3 feet away like it could see it and with a skinny vine started winding up the thing in the same direction of wind as a pole bean with no help from me at all.:dizzy::lol:
Worth

Here it is going away from the sun not towards it.
Another oddity.
Worth
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[ATTACH]73976[/ATTACH]

interesting Worth.

how much water? I put mine in the hightunnel and they are little bushes at this point but I think I need to put in a drip tape for them. probably too dry for them there.

Durgan, were they purple fleshed or just purple skinned?

The skin was purple only. I don't see them often in the Supermarket. The common type is [B]Beauregard. [/B]

I don't know the name of the purple skinned type that I am growing.

I haven't read every last post... I have a headache... it is too much to focus on right now, but do you pinch the vines to make them bushier or let them go? more foliage = more potatoes? bigger potatoes? I would speculate large croppers don't do a thing but does it make a difference?

I dont pitch vines but I have very little experience other than on the farm growing up.
Worth

Bumping.

Sandhill is giving me the courage to try sweet potatos. My kids love them--now. THey look easy to grow, just need enough heat.

I did the calculation and plan to try some of the early varieties to hedge my bet. Not sure the grocery varietes are early so dont want to waste my time.

Maine Potato Lady has just a few varieties listed.

Last year was my first time growing sweet potatoes on a limited basis and they actually made! My sister brought home two organic 'Jewel' potatoes from Publix (to avoid any anti-sprouting stuff on them) and I did the toothpick/jar of water thing. One good thing I found out is that Jewel is nematode resistant. Yay!

The first three slips were planted in an unused half of a raised bed. I had read that if you keep the vines clipped to about 4' or so the energy will mainly go into growing the potatoes. So I did that to the raised bed potatoes. Besides, it kept them from running everywhere.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/EQCWK10.jpg[/IMG]

As more slips grew (eventually six more) they were planted where the Irish potatoes had grown. Hey, lots of loose soil and a different plant family so why not? :D

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/xI9kPNL.jpg[/IMG]

These vines were allowed to go everywhere they wanted. Eventually the sweet potato vines and the watermelon vines to the left of them introduced themselves, grew together and had a grand time. :lol: I have since read on Sandhills' site that the vines need to be lifted now and then to keep them from rooting down. I'm going to try that this year with the ones I let run.

These were the first sweet potatoes dug from the raised bed. They were nicer than the later ones.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/n0sMM3b.jpg[/IMG]

Right now I have three sweet potatoes doing the jar of water thing. The last two in the basket where they've been stored are sprouting on their own so I'll let them keep doing their thing. This year I'll do a whole raised bed of them (about 9 or 10 hills) and again follow the Irish spuds with about six hills.