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VirginiaClay · January 16, 2025

I grew sweet potatoes last year for the first time and really enjoyed it. The whole process of starting the slips and watching them grow was a lot of fun. To grow my slips, I used a cheap pack of an unnamed orange variety from the racks at Home Depot, an unknown orange from Giant grocery store, and an unknown organic white from Wegmans. All of them produced nice slips, but the one from Giant took much longer to sprout -- maybe had been treated with something.

I ended up with probably 50+ slips from just two shoebox-sized containers, and each of those slips could have been cut up into multiples, so I easily could have planted my whole garden in sweet potatoes if I had wanted to. As it was, I planted about a dozen of them.

I had to cover the plants in a lean-to made of window screens because the deer really loved them. Unfortunately I planted the slips about a month too late, and in the shade of a row of tomato plants, so most of my harvest was basically "fingerlings." I did get a handful of full-size sweet potatoes, though, and digging them out was fun.

January 16, 2025	#34
VirginiaClay Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2019 Location: Virginia, USA Posts: 149	I grew sweet potatoes last year for the first time and really enjoyed it. The whole process of starting the slips and watching them grow was a lot of fun. To grow my slips, I used a cheap pack of an unnamed orange variety from the racks at Home Depot, an unknown orange from Giant grocery store, and an unknown organic white from Wegmans. All of them produced nice slips, but the one from Giant took much longer to sprout -- maybe had been treated with something. I ended up with probably 50+ slips from just two shoebox-sized containers, and each of those slips could have been cut up into multiples, so I easily could have planted my whole garden in sweet potatoes if I had wanted to. As it was, I planted about a dozen of them. I had to cover the plants in a lean-to made of window screens because the deer really loved them. Unfortunately I planted the slips about a month too late, and in the shade of a row of tomato plants, so most of my harvest was basically "fingerlings." I did get a handful of full-size sweet potatoes, though, and digging them out was fun.