In the middle of the summer, I planted a piece of sweet potato that had started to sprout to see what it would do. I’ve been trying to grow sweet potatoes every year since we moved to Georgia and have finally figured out the timing and how to do it. This time, I knew it was not the right timing, but couldn’t just toss the sprout into the compost knowing that it would at least be pretty as vines in one of the containers on the deck. So I nestled the little sliver of sweet potato next to this pineapple to make an interesting arrangement of spikes and vines. It looked really neat when it was very green and climbing up the lattice. When the vines started to yellow, I figured it was time to see if any sweet potatoes grew from that little slip.

Here is the original slice of potato. When I planted it, there was only one slip attached, and it looks like several more grew after I planted it. I kept digging…

and digging…

and digging…

and digging.

Now this isn’t a ton of sweet potatoes, but not too bad for one little slip that started in the kitchen. I chopped them up and added them to a batch of soup. In January each year, I purposely start sweet potatoes sprouting to plant in March. This was just a little experiment that was lots of fun. The kids love digging up potatoes in the garden. If we never ate them, I’d still grow them just to watch the kids having fun digging them up. 🙂