GRANDBOB'S GARDEN: How to Grow A Beautiful Sweet Potato Vine in Your Kitchen

Friday, May 15, 2009

How to Grow A Beautiful Sweet Potato Vine in Your Kitchen

Here's the Basics:

Find one nice Sweet Potato at the grocery store -preferably long and skinny , anywhere from 4 to 6 inches long with a lot of eyes, - indentions where potatoes make roots and leaves. (They do look kinda like eyes indentions.)

At about 1/3 to 1/2 of the potatoe length down, stick 4 toothpicks firmly into the potato - like spokes opposite each other - all at the same level, ( they will kinda form a cross through the potato.

Find a fruit jar (a quart jar is always good).
Fill it with luke warm water. Not hot - Not Cold. If you can't tell for sure if its hot or cold, you have the exact temperature to water All plants. You don't want to "Shock them". After all, plants have feelings too! So all the books I read in the '70 said. My wife still talks to her plants....

Now you know why the toothpicks. They act as arms to suspend the sweet potato in the jar. Place the Sweet Potat0 and Jar in a moderately sunny window where you get filtered sunlight for at least 3 or 4 hours a day. Too much sun can burn the leaves.

Soon you will see roots forming at the bottom and then leaves and trailers will form and start reaching out into the air. This should happen within a couple weeks or so.

Get some heavy Utility string or garden twine for the vine to cling to and trail on. In a few months your vine should be several feet long, greening up the kitchen and if you change the water occasionally, and give it a shot of "Miracle Grow" once a month; it should be flourishing grandly!

Note: Winters are hard on these beautiful plants if you have too dry of air. (Gas and even Electric heating without plenty of humidity to accomidate it, can cause severe drying out of plants. This is a major cause for most of the plants that die indoors in the winter.

If you start getting dry skin or nose bleeds etc, from the dryness of the air, your plant will probably be also suffering from the same thing! Get a humidifier. I think this is probably the reason Sweet Potatoes have traditionally been found in the kitchen or the nearby dining room table. They love the steam from cooking and the humid conditions that often occur there!

Any questions? comments?. Post me if this has been any help. Post me if you need more help. And, I'd just like to know how your Sweet Potato is doing.

AFTER TWO WEEKS GROWING TIME:

(For a good view, click on the pictures.)

At the very tip of the Sweet Potato - Just above the "M" in Wide Mouth designation on the Ball Jar, you will see two small white roots forming. There are others but are hard to show in the jar.

After only 2 weeks, Leaves and Stems are beginning to sprout out of the top of the Sweet Potato Plant. Click on picture above to see something rather scarry looking!

Week Three
And now we are beginning to see real progress with the Sweet Potato in a Jar.

Click on Pictures to get a better view
of the leaf and stem structure appearing. Also, notice that they Are Purple and Green - contrary to the unbelievers who never seen these plants. So, guess who has the last laugh? I was 6 years old when these wonderful plants made such a great impression on me that I remembered the colors exactly. Wait till you see them unfold into hand sized leaves in all their glory of Purple and Green.

Just as I remembered... Ha Ha Unbelievers!

More roots, stems and leaves starting !

Emerging Purple and Green Leaves and Stems. Click on the Picture!