Get started growing Sweet Potatoes in your kitchen window!

Start growing sweet potatoes in your kitchen window
You can start growing potatoes right in your kitchen window.

Did you know you can start to grow sweet potatoes right in your kitchen, and today if you have any sweet potatoes in the cupboard?

Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite vegetables! Baked sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie, sweet potato fries, or my grandmother’s “Sweet Potato Fluff”… it’s all delicious!

Let’s talk about how easy it is to grow them.

Here are the steps:

  • Fill a jar about halfway with water.
  • Find a sweet potato.
  • Look at sweet potato and determine which end is the top and which is the bottom. The bottom will be more blunt and the top will be more pointed.
  • Put three toothpicks in sweet potato about halfway down from the top.
  • Put sweet potato in jar of water and set it in a window and wait until roots and slips develop.
  • After a few weeks you should have slips growing from the potatoes. Once they’re at least 6″ long, but ideally around 10″ or so long, gently separate them from the potato and they will be ready to plant.

Here’s a video showing the process with growing slips. I’m not planting my sweet potatoes in buckets so that part of the video doesn’t apply to me, but the first half of the video has some great information about what to look for and how to propagate more slips for more plants.


Planting sweet potatoes

If you’re planting sweet potatoes in your garden rather than containers, pay attention to where you plant them.

Sweet potato grow well with herbs, especially summer savory, which can help deter sweet potato weevils, but avoid planting them near plants with long vines, such as squash, because they will wind up competing for ground space which can result in weakening one or both plants.

Click here for more companion planting recommendations.

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