Where can I buy sweet potatoes to make my own slips?

This has truly been a frustrating search. I can’t understand why I can’t find what I am looking for! :thinking:

Disease is the reason few places sell sweet potatoes as you are asking. I know of a place in Mississippi that sells commercial quantities of specific varieties. You might find something by searching for Mississippi sweet potato bulk.

Your best bet would be to purchase slips for a dozen varieties and grow your own tubers for next year. Sandhill has a wide selection. If you would like suggestions of varieties, several of us know what produces and tastes good for our climates. As an example, I grow Mahon (aka Bradshaw) sweet potatoes every year. I have not found a better orange than Mahon. Sumor and White Delite are excellent white flesh varieties. Purple is a good deep purple flesh sweet potato. Several recent releases from Louisiana should be considered.

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Thanks for the recommendations!

If you want to start commercial production, you get tissue cultured plants from the link below and grow your own “seed potatoes” for slip production.

https://mpru.wordpress.ncsu.edu/

Here’s an old article about a NC family farm that produces slips and sweet potatoes for other growers to make their own slips. It’s a 3 year process under strict sanitation to produce virus and disease free sweet potatoes for commercial production.

About 3/4 down into article they discuss G1,G2 and G3 classes of sweet potato “seed” production.

The North Carolina Crop Improvement Association has a list of certified sweet potato growers and the varieties they sell.
Once you click on the link below, scroll page to see the results, it’s not smart phone friendly. The list indicates which Generations they sell.

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Wow! Thanks so much! I never thought to search for the information in this way.

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@FarmGirl-Z6A

Once you get your mother plant or potato that is disease free then you take cuttings and root them in water just like a house plant. Sweet Potato Cultivation - Propagation

Once winter comes you have the potatoes and a few house plants for next year






Next spring stick the cuttings in water and root a bunch again! The nice part is if you have to many slips and to much greens to ever sell the greens are edible to and most people dont eat them.

Sweet Potato Greens - Transplanting Traditions Community Farm.
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Sweet Potato Greens

Photo Credit: Tha Dah Wah

DESCRIPTION: Sweet Potatoes are one of NC’s biggest crops and yet, most of us have never tried eating the greens. Sweet potato greens are the edible leaves of the sweet potato vine. Though widely eaten throughout Asia & Africa, they are less well known to most of us in the U.S. The good news is they’re edible and delicious, high in Vitamin C and B6, and they thrive in the summer heat, unlike all the other leafy greens we crave.

Cook them up just like you would chard or water spinach (they’re tender, so don’t take long at all to cook) in a stir-fry, stew, omelet, or simply sauteed alone with some garlic. Be sure not to include the larger stems, since they’re tough. Saute them with garlic or onions in olive oil until tender, braise them in coconut milk with ginger & turmeric, or use them in place of spinach in saag paneer (I will often use feta if I can’t find Indian paneer).

STORAGE: Store sweet potato greens wrapped in a dry paper towel inside an open bag in your fridge for several days. If they wilt a little, don’t worry. They wilt easily, but will cook up just fine. NOTE: like water spinach, they don’t keep for long, so eat them right away.

RECIPE: Sweet Potato Greens in Lemongrass and Coconut Milk (adapted from Love & Olive Oil) serves 4

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add a good pinch of salt. Remove any thick stems from your bunch of greens and toss the greens into the boiling water. Blanch for half a minute or until tender and drain. Set aside. Trim your lemongrass and finely slice a 2 inch length of it. Mince an onion, a clove or two of garlic, and a half inch piece of fresh ginger. Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a big pan over medium heat and add your minced ingredients along with a pinch of ground turmeric (optional) and a pinch of chili flakes (optional) and a pinch of salt. Stir in a spoonful of soy sauce. Stir in 2 cups coconut milk and bring to a simmer. Now, add in your blanched greens and simmer for a couple minutes. Stir in a spoonful of sugar and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with rice.

MORE RECIPES:

Stir Fried Sweet Potato Greens

Sweet Potato Leaves Salad

Korean Stir-Fried Sweet Potato Stems "

If someone is selling bundles of greens at a local health food store they can be made into slips also by rooting them in water.

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I looked last year for slips for a Korean variety and couldn’t find any. I do see a few Japanese varieties sold.

Why do I mention it? I’m intrigued by the description of some of the east Asian varieties as having a nutty flavor and being drier fleshed.

The impact of watching foreign TV shows…you want to grow/cook/eat what you see them enjoying in the shows.

It’s what brought me to cucurbita moschata, I’m my case Korean Aehobek. Easier to grow, takes less space as it’s a climber like cucumber, and, for me, I like how it holds together when cooking especially in soups.

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I put in an order for 12 okinawan plants from tatorman.com .

I had been looking for slips, but finally caved and got the dozen plants. It’ll be a challenge to grow them here since they like heat and need a long growing season to mature, but I think they’ll like growbags or strawbales on the SW corner of my house/garage. If we get threatened with an early cold snap in September I can always bring them in.

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I realize you are looking for an outlet for bulk sweet potatoes. An interesting side-note, however, is that looking up the PLU sticker # of supermarket sweet potatoes gives you its specific variety, e.g. #94816 = Beauregard.

I’ve tried growing sweet potatoes in a very marginal zone. Temps here rarely exceed 80 afor few days each summer. This is my report from last fall:
Sep '23

This is my second year trying to coax growth from sweet potatoes in the maritime PNW. With a lot of tweaking, I’m finally starting to get some productivity.

The first challenge was whether to order slips or grow my own. My experience with ordering slips (Sandhill Preservation, Johnny’s Selected Seeds) has been that the slips arrive late and suffer from transit. This year I decided to start my own from supermarket varieties. There are at least 3 unnamed varieties carried by my local supermarket. By researching the PLU database, I found the following: Beauregard #94816, Japanese #94817, and Garnet #94074.

I placed the potatoes lengthwise in a covered bin of damp peatmoss/perlite on top of a heating pad. Within 3 weeks the potatoes had started to sprout. I continued growing them under lights until the sprouts were 5-6" tall. Then I cut off the sprouts and placed them in water.
IMG_1682

After 1 week the sprouts had grown roots and I transplanted them to pots to wait for my soil to warm up to 65F. I grew 3 plants of 4 varieties under cover in two 4x4x2 black plastic totes with black weed cloth on top. I watered them about once every 2 weeks. Next year I will need to increase the watering.

The results probably looks pretty pitiful to those who have long hot summers! …i.e. a lot of long skinny tubers! Perhaps with more consistent water I can get some beefier ones. Of the 4 varieties planted, Beauregard produced tubers with the most mass. Will be trying Beauregard
again next year.
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Any sweet potatoes from grocery store will work. Best bet is those from organic stores and select smaller sized tubers like inch or two inch in circumference.

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Quite an ambitious project :slight_smile: btw, afaik, tatorman sends slips not potted plants. Make sure you sanitize them since I have got scruf from their slips before.

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Please report back; I’ve wanted to grow those in our climate but wasn’t sure we’d get enough time to maturity.

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If they’re actually slips I may be in trouble considering they won’t ship here until late May. :wink:

But I have grow lights in the basement so if need be I can drag them in there in October.

Or as Drago would say, if they die…they die.

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You’ll need slips so that they can form storage roots in-situ. Don’t even bother planting them until your temps are in upper 70F to 80F. I am in Zone 8 (Portland, OR) and have experimented planting them in May, June and July. Slips planted in mid-June/1st week of July developed the best roots. Meanwhile you warm your soil with plastic green IR-76 plastic works the best. I doubt you’ll be able to drag them inside the vines will be too long and unruly. Just harvest them before the frost.

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While a lot of people would love to grow Okinawan, I don’t recommend it above zone 7b. I’ve grown it off and on for 20 years and usually get a small crop. It requires about 150 days to mature tubers. One of my more interesting observations is that I got my best crop ever when deer browsed the plants a little near the end of the growing season. Why? Because the plants made more small to medium size tubers which are ideal for producing slips next year.

Georgia Jet is an example of a very fast growing sweet potato that can mature in northern climates. I don’t like it for several reasons but it does grow very very fast. A few other varieties are similar with fast growth and early maturity.

Left is “Purple”, middle (white) is “Okinawan”, and right (pink/orange) is Nuggett.

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I’ll add Covington, Centennial to the early maturing list. Carolina Ruby needs 20 more days but worth it if one can cover the vines for last two weeks in October.

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I just wanted to follow up on this. There is a privately owned garden center about 40 minutes from our farm that sells 9 varieties of sweet potato slips that the owner grows out himself. He has been selling them for a very long time. I have bought slips from him for many years myself.

A few years ago, I asked the owner if I could buy sweet potatoes from him when he orders. He agreed, but I never got back to him. I decided to call him up and was able to put an order in with him and pick up is around April 1st.

He couldn’t tell me exactly what varieties I was ordering, because he was busy and didn’t have time to look it up. I could probably find the varieties in my records if I looked hard enough, but it really doesn’t matter because I trust the source.

Anyway, I just thought I would let folks know how this turned out for me. :slight_smile:

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I started mine March 1 in 7b/8a to produce slips ready to plant May 1. I lay the sweet potatoes in potting soil under plant lights to sprout them.

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I typically start mine in a hotbed outside under a low tunnel.

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Do you cover them completely or leave the tops uncovered?

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