starting sweet potato slips

In keeping with the tuber theme of my last post, today I started the process of preparing sweet potato slips to plant in this year's garden. I am only planning on having about 4 plants in my garden this year, so it didn't make any sense for me to buy a whole bunch of slips from a seed house. Most of the vendors I looked at required me to buy a minimum of 12-15 slips.

I bought a fairly ordinary sweet potato at the grocery store today and simply pierced it with a wooden applicator stick that I got from my lab (I couldn't find any toothpicks in the house). The stick was inserted in the middle of the sweet potato such that about half of the stick was exposed on either side.

I pierced it again with a second applicator stick so that they roughly intersected in an 'X'. Finally, I placed the sweet potato in a pickle jar with some water in it. This will remain under my grow lights where it will get about 12 hours per day of intense light.

Now, we just wait for the slips to start sprouting. To be continued ...