Do you want to know how to grow sweet potatoes from just one sweet potato tuber?
You can grow sweet potato vines from tubers from a single grocery store sweet potato to produce pounds and pounds of homegrown sweet potatoes right in your own backyard.
In this post, I will walk you through my tried-and-true method for growing sweet potato vines from tubers. You’ll watch a sweet potato slip (baby vine) turn into a full plant and learn how many sweet potatoes grow from one plant under the right conditions.
I hope this post gives you confidence to start your own slips from a single sweet potato and end up with a harvest that can carry you through winter.
You’ll have plenty just in time for Thanksgiving!
In 2023, I grew and harvested nearly 100 pounds of sweet potatoes grown right in my perennial garden beds. All from one sweet potato and some good soil.
And guess what? It was my first time growing them.
Sweet potatoes are a perfect crop to grow if you’re looking for a plant that’s easy to grow, productive, beautiful in the garden, and easy to store if you’re trying to be a little more self-sufficient.
Why Grow Sweet Potatoes?
Sweet potatoes are a nutritious tuber that are
- Very easy to grow,
- Productive (you’ll get tons of potatoes per plant)
- Long-keepers (store well for a long time)
- Yummy!
They are high in fiber, full of beta carotene, vitamin C, and potassium. This Healthline article explains more about the nutritional content of sweet potatoes if you want to dive deeper.
But the best thing about sweet potatoes comes after the harvest.
A simple curing process gets sweet potatoes ready to store all winter long.
That’s right. No canning, no freezing, no dehydrating.
This is huge if you have ever felt overwhelmed by the flood of summer produce that needs to be preserved immediately.
And let’s not forget all the tasty ways to cook sweet potatoes: roasted sweet potatoes, baked and stuffed sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie, mashed, pureed… the list goes on and on!
How to Grow Sweet Potato Vines from Tubers
Let’s start at the very beginning.
To grow sweet potatoes, all you need is one sweet potato tuber. Yep, that’s it.
(A tuber is just a term for the fleshy part of the root that we eat. Exactly like the photo below.)
A single tuber can produce many sweet potato vines, which are then planted out to grow full-sized sweet potatoes.
Sweet potatoes are tubers, much like white potatoes, and they grow underground. But planting them is a little different.
With white potatoes, you plant a piece of potato with an “eye” (the part where the sprouts come out).
But with sweet potatoes, you plant slips.
What Are Sweet Potato Slips?
Slips are the rooted sprouts that grow from a sweet potato tuber.
When you focus on growing sweet potato vines from a tuber, what you’re really doing is encouraging the tuber to produce many slips. Each slip becomes its own plant.
Each plant then produces multiple sweet potatoes as you can see in the photo below. That’s one sweet potato plant!
This is why sweet potatoes are so productive.
It’s simple to grow slips yourself, and one tuber will easily grow 15 or more slips from one tuber.
Which leads us to a very important question…
How Many Sweet Potatoes Grow From One Plant?
This depends on growing conditions, but on average:
- One slip can produce 3-10 sweet potatoes
- One tuber can produce 15 or more slips
- Meaning, one tuber can yield dozens and dozens of sweet potatoes
I hope you like sweet potatoes!
What Kind of Sweet Potato Tuber Do You Need?
While you can buy sweet potato slips and even seed sweet potatoes online or at nurseries, you can easily grow slips from a grocery store sweet potato.
Look for a sweet potato that is firm, large, healthy-looking with good color, and organic.
An organic sweet potato is less likely to have been sprayed with sprout-inhibitors and will grow slips more readily.
Or just check your pantry and see if you have a forgotten sweet potato that has already started to sprout.
I love the regular old orange-fleshed, reddish skinned sweet potato, but white-fleshed sweet potato and purple ones are fun too.
Common orange sweet potato varieties include Beuregard, Jewel, and Garnet.
I have no idea what varieties I have grown, but if I had to guess, the orange one was a Garnet. It was very moist and I have seen them labeled “Garnet Sweet Potatoes” at the store sometimes.
When To Plant Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes take around 100 days from planting to harvest. They love warmth and are very sensitive to cold, so it’s important to get them in the ground when the weather is just right.
Sprouting slips takes about a month, so you’ll want to start them a month before you plant to plant the slips.
Our first frost date is October 10, so I try to get my potatoes planted by late May to early June.
This means I start my slips a little over a month before then, in mid- to late April.
If you’re not sure when to plant or how long your growing season is, pause here and find your frost dates. For more guidance, check out this post I wrote on knowing when it’s safe to plant.
How To Grow Sweet Potato Slips
There are two common methods for growing sweet potato vines from tubers: the water method and soil method.
Water Method
This is a fun one.
- Insert toothpicks around the middle of a sweet potato.
- Place the bottom half in a jar of water and let the top half poke out the top.
- Put the jar in a warm, bright location.
- Change the water every few days and wait for roots and slips to grow.
It’s exciting to watch the slips grow!
Soil Method (My Preferred Way)
This is the method I use grow sweet potato vines from tubers, and roots and slips sprout much quicker.
- Use a shallow container with drainage holes (an old berry container works great).
- Fill it with regular potting soil.
- Bury the sweet potato halfway, leaving the top exposed.
- Water well.
Then place it under a grow light (or if the weather is warm enough, outdoors in indirect light). If you have a heat mat, this speeds things up, but it’s not required.
After 7-14 days, roots and sprouts begin to form.
Once the sprouts are 3-4 inches long with several leaves, carefully pull them off the sweet potato, trying to keep any extra roots attached.
These are your slips.
The mother tuber will continue to produce more slips as long as you keep it watered and happy, so you can keep harvesting until you have all the slips that you need. Share some with a friend!
Planting Sweet Potato Slips
If you don’t want to plant your slips immediately, or if the slips don’t have roots yet, you can plant them in small pots or keep them in a jar of water until roots form.
I find it easiest to just pop them directly into the garden. Sweet potato slips are surprisingly tough.
As long as they have a few healthy leaves and are watered well, they’ll root just fine in the soil (even if they don’t have roots yet).
If you have time, you can harden them off gradually by exposing them to direct sun outdoors for a few hours a day, increasing the time over the course of a week.
If not, I’ve found that sweet potato slips are pretty forgiving!
Sweet Potato Plant Care
Sweet potatoes like
- loose, well-draining soil
- warm temperatures (60°F/16°C and up)
- regular deep watering, but not sitting in soggy soil
I typically give my sweet potatoes a small handful of balanced organic granular fertilizer at planting time, and nothing else after. Easy peasy.
You will know your sweet potatoes are happy because they will start growing large leaves and long vines rapidly. They may even flower.
Sweet potatoes are related to morning glory (both are in the ipomoea family) and their flowers look a lot like it! This bee is loving this sweet potato flower.
It’s Fun to Grow Your Own Sweet Potatoes
Honestly, growing sweet potatoes feels almost too easy fro how much food you get in return.
As you’ve seen, one tuber turns into many slips, which will yield many pounds of potatoes and keep your cellar filled for months.
I have been so grateful to have a large crop of sweet potatoes ready and waiting for me through the fall and winter holidays, and even into spring.
Growing your own sweet potatoes is a simple way to be more self-sufficient and keep your homestead pantry well-stocked for many months.
And when you’re ready for the next step, learn how I harvest and cure sweet potatoes for winter storage next!
It’s one of the most satisfying harvests you’ll bring in, and definitely one you’ll want to showcase in a garden-to-table Thanksgiving menu like this one.