Sweet potatoes

Three orange sweet potato tubers that have been in the vegetable rack for ages - easily four or five months. Treated like avocado pear pips with three matches stuck in the side to keep them from sinking into bottles, and are now producing shoots like crazy. The other two are "standard" purple sweet potatoes, which struggled to produce shoots/slips. The one on the left has just started after about three weeks, and the other one, behind it, has rotted.

This is about the third batch of shoots/slips to grow on this particular tuber. They're twisted off, and others grow in their place within a couple of days.

The shoots/slips are put into a large Bovril bottle containing water in order to root. Someone told me ages ago that rooting is more effective if you use a dark bottle. Bovril bottles are made out of black glass, and seem to work pretty well.

It only takes a couple of days for the roots to develop on the slips.

They're put into seedling mix, and left a week or so to develop more roots. Supposedly the slips can be planted direct into the ground, with no necessity for rooting - I'll try that next time.

Three seedling trays, in various stages of development - the oldest is about ten days old, the youngest about three days. Ready to move to the bed.

Transplanted into future asparagus bed. It's very sandy and deep, with lots of leaf compost. Standing idle at the moment, until next spring, so why not try sweet potatoes?

I've transplanted nine of the "best" slips from the trays, and also the three tubers that were sitting in the bottles. Having run out of space, it's pointless producing more slips. I've got about ten that I'll keep going in case of problems here. The rooted tubers were planted on end, which might not be the optimal orientation...

In theory the vines will grow vigorously and spread all over, and in about three months when they start turning yellow, it'll be time to dig them up.

Progress reports as things happen.

Update 2016/01/24:

Seem to be growing quite vigorously. Replaced two, which had been dug up by cats.

Update 2016/01/28:

Note the difference in leaves on these rooted slips... not sure if this means anything? Some are lobed, ivy like, others a simple heart shape.

Update 2016/02/07:

This is after about a month. Supposedly it takes three to four months (16 to 18 weeks of warm weather, depending on what you read) for tubers to develop, so there should be something by April/May if it stays warm. In theory the vines start yellowing and die back before you cut them off and dig up.

We'll see.

The "normal" purple skin sweet potato puts out completely different, very vigorous and tall slips. I've planted a few, but not paying much attention to them.

Update 2016/02/14:

Starting to run tendrils everywhere... they're looking quite happy.

Update 2016/02/15:

Noticed that roots are forming at the leaf nodes of some tendrils where they touch the ground.

Update 2016/02/21:

I still have no idea how one set of slips (on the left upper) got lobed leaves. The sweet potato they grew from is one of the three planted out on the right of the bed.

Update 2016/02/28:

Rampaging away...

Update 2016/03/04:

The ridiculously long tendrils from normal purple skin variety. This is the third set of slips off this particular potato. I'm afraid it might be too late to plant these out.

Update 2016/03/07:

Update 2016/03/13:

This makes it about 60 days. Another two months, which will take it to mid-May. Problem is it's already getting cool in the evenings, down to about 12 deg C.

Update 2016/03/24:

Update 2016/04/19:

Update 2016/05/01:

Note there's still two distinct leaf types. I still have no idea how this happened - unless there were two different varieties of orange sweet potatoes in the three I found at the back of the drawer and used to produce the original slips?

They've been growing now for nearly four months, and it's getting cold - regularly below 10degC in the evenings, too cold for something that supposedly likes the heat. I'll leave them another month before rooting around to see what they're doing underground.