Planting indoors can be a real fun! That is why we prepared an indoor planting project for the upcoming week. You can get your kitchen windowsill overrun with plants in various stages and you are going to love it!
This time we have made up our mind to start growing sweet potatoes. What is at stake here?
Well, nothing really is at stake here since we have nothing to lose, except half a potato if our “feat” fails. We just wanted to see if our sweet dreams for growing sweet potatoes within our hand reach can come true!
So, after we had picked up 3 large sweet potatoes over the weekend to make more of our own sweet potato dog chews, we decided to see to try our hand at growing some of our own.
On the realistic side, we would be just happy if we are able to get 1 sweet potato to grow this very first round and build it up down the road as we go.
Let us tell you something right away: It is NOT quite as easy to get these potatoes started as planting a seed. We decided to go down the route which is almost the same as our avocado plant startup.
So, we started by cutting the potato in half, and then inserting 3 toothpicks midway into the halved potato and resting it in a shallow container of water.
With the cut part of the potato submerged in water and the top half of it exposed to the air, and placed on a sunlit windowsill, roots should begin to grow from the bottom and stems from the top. Some notes state that up to 20 shoots (!) could sprout from the top, all of which could become a separate potato plant!
There is a process for pruning and planting the stems in order to get vigorous potato vines, but we will only try our hand at getting this “dude” to sprout before tackling anything beyond that.
Course 1: After letting a few more weeks of growing time on our sunny windowsill, our sweet potato has sprouted both roots and stems as we had hoped for. Take a look at the pictures below.
Course 2: Once the sprouts reached about 5 inches (12.7cm) in length, we twisted them off and put them in a shallow bowl of water to promote root growth directly from these slip vines:
Course 3: Not even a day later the slips began growing roots from the base of their stems:
Once the roots reached about 1 inch (2.54 cm) long, we planted them in a burlap coffee sack planter bag:
Course 4: It has been a little over a month since we planted our potatoes and their vine growth has taken off so well! Just take a closer look:
Course 5: Not long after the vines began taking off, they really accelerated growth and began to “conquest” the ground around the bags. So, we decided to make some DIY vine supports from branches we had at hand:
YESSSS… Our dreams came true! Now we have wonderful bountiful potato vines that can supply yummy potatoes for many good recipes!
Sweet Potato Dog Chew Recipe
For those of you who have an always hungry pet dog, in or outside the house, we tried this very easy “chew recipe.” But first we bought some additional potatoes to try making thicker and more substantial dog treat chews. The first batch came very successful although it lacked that thickness and “meatiness” we were hoping for.
With this going round, we simply chopped them with a sharp knife in much thicker portions — ¾ of an inch each (give or take). The dehydration process took about twice as long, but when these “guys” came out of the oven, they were much closer to the look and feel we were going for — plus they take that much longer for any dog to chew through.
Finally, wish us luck — we’ll keep you posted with other indoor started fruit or veggie plants!
PLEASE SHARE IT WITH YOUR PLANT-LOVING FRIENDS AND FAMILY