Japanese Sweet Potato (Purple Satsumaimo)

I planted these Satsumaimo slips on 6 October of last year, which makes them about nine months old.

Someone on my blog asked if 6 inches was deep enough to grow sweet potatoes and I said yes, but the more soil you have the better the container can retain moister and the tubers will not crack. Also, a deeper container will allow the tubers to grow larger, but this container has about 8 inches of soil and my tubers were fine, but had some cracks. 

The first thing I do is remove the vines and set them aside to make new slips for planting.

Clean container ready to flip.

Press down the soil and pick out the tubers. When complete, place the soil back in the container and mix in some fertilizer and mineral pellets.

Using the vines set aside earlier, make some slips and plant them as deep as possible. Water well for the first 10 days. You will see many of the leaves dry up, but that is fine. As long as the slips survive they will grow new roots, leaves and produce tubers.

I always weight my bounty. I got 3kg (6.6 lbs) of tubers, which is a pretty decent amount for a small container.

Lastly, I place the tubers outside in a cool dry spot to cure for 10-14 days. These are the Japanese sweet potatoes that turn yellow when cooked and are usually super sweet. I can't wait to try them.

(08/20) Seven days later the slips are growing well. They just need a lot of watering the first 10-14 days to take root. I have some blank spots where the slip did not make it, so will fill them in later.