This year I am planting sweet potatoes in my summer vegetable garden. As always I am looking for the least expensive way to do it, so I decided to start my own slips instead of buying transplants. The process is SO easy, I just had to share. Here are the 4 simple steps:

1) Buy a sweet potato from the grocery store. If you want organic plants, then buy an organic sweet potato. Cut the potato in half and use toothpicks to suspend the cut end into a cup of water. 

2)  Place the cup in a warm sunny place. In a few weeks you will begin to see sprouts growing from the potato as you can see in the picture above. If the potato isn't sprouting, it isn't warm enough. Give it more heat and more time, and it will sprout.

 4) Once your slip has a pretty good amount of roots, simply plant it in the ground once the weather is warm. I ended up with more slips that I had room for in the garden, but have heard that they grow great in pots, so now I have lots of container plants growing as well. 

The way I see it, you can't have too many sweet potatoes! I hope this helps you successfully grow a crop of your own. Do you have a different way of starting sweet potatoes? Please share!