Why are sweet potatoes often grown using slips?
RH: I suspect that growing sweet potatoes from slips is a matter of convenience and a way to reduce cost. It is truly amazing how quickly a slip without roots gets established in the garden. Sweet potatoes root along their stems quite easily, and most of the time the slips have roots already started. Sweet potatoes seldom flower at this latitude so we don’t see seed. If you were to grow sweet potatoes from seed you would have a new variety just like you do when you grow potatoes from seed. This happens quite often in tropical latitudes, which helps account for the large number of commercial varieties available. PG: What’s the difference broadly speaking (I don’t want to give away your whole class!) between using potato seeds, seed potatoes and slips? RH: When you use seed potatoes or slips, you are growing exactly the same plant and genetic material that produced the seed potato or slip. This assures that you are growing exactly the same thing you grew the year before, or that you are
