Try These New Methods for Growing Sweet Potato Slips

The traditional technique for growing sweet potato slips is to store sweet potatoes harvested in autumn, plant and cultivate them in spring to grow vines, then cut the vines into sections and root them to produce sweet potato slips. This method is labor-intensive, time-consuming and uses up seed potatoes, and the winter storage technique is hard to master, which affects the following year's propagation. Here are three new methods for growing sweet potato slips: 

1. The vine hibernation method for growing slips. The vine hibernation method for growing slips is to keep the vines harvested in autumn until the 2nd year to use as sweet potato slips. 

1. Cutting the vines: After the autumn sweet potato harvest, choose robust vines free of frost damage and disease, remove the leaves, keep 1 cm of leaf stalk, and cut them into sections of two nodes each. 

2. Forced dormancy: Soak the cut vines in a 0.5% Amfetrine solution for two minutes, then take them out and dry the surface moisture. 

3. Sieving the sand: Pass ordinary yellow sand through a sieve to remove large grains of sand and impurities, then sprinkle with water; the moisture level should be such that the sand holds together when squeezed and crumbles apart when released. 

4. Sand storage: First dig a pit in the ground, with no limit on length and width, and a depth of 1.2 m (depending on the thickness of the winter frozen soil layer in each area, with a storage temperature of 5-10°C being suitable). Then lay the vines flat in the pit using a layer of vines and a layer of sand, leaving a 1 cm gap between the vines. Each layer of sand should be no less than 3 cm thick, and the top layer of sand should be no less than 15 cm thick; cover its surface with plastic film, and in areas with heavy frost, cover the film with straw or grass curtains. By the spring sweet potato planting season of the following year, take the vines out and root them. The vine hibernation method for growing slips can save the land occupied by growing slips from seed potatoes and the field management during the slip-growing period. After sand storage, the vines have already produced a small number of new roots when taken out, and after rooting they establish quickly and grow well, which can increase the sweet potato yield per unit area by 15-20%. 

2. The root growing method for slips. The root growing method for slips is to transplant the roots harvested in autumn into a greenhouse or onto a building balcony, and cultivate sweet potato vines throughout the winter to keep as sweet potato slips. 

1. After the autumn sweet potato harvest, choose robust sweet potato roots free of frost damage and disease; on the upper part of the root, keep 2-3 nodes of vine from the root upward on each, remove the leaves, and keep 1 cm of leaf stalk for later use. 

2. According to the amount of sweet potato slips to be grown, choose a suitable slip-growing site; in a greenhouse, dig small furrows (30 cm wide, 20 cm deep) with a center-to-center distance of 80 cm, and plant the sweet potato roots on both sides of the small furrows at a spacing of 20 cm, generally planting 12 plants per sq m. On a house balcony, sweet potato roots can be planted in flower pots, using the same method as greenhouse cultivation. 

3. In the greenhouse or above the floor of the house balcony (about 1.6 m above the ground), stretch No. 14-16 wire according to the planting spacing of the sweet potato roots, and tie some plastic rope or hemp rope to the wire, with one end of the rope tied to the wire and the other end tied to the sweet potato root. After the vines on the sweet potato roots sprout, keep 3 robust sprouts per plant, with one sprout corresponding to one rope, so that after the sweet potato roots sprout, the vines climb upward along the ropes. 

4. The newly grown sweet potato vines need to be wound onto the ropes by hand, generally once every 1-2 days. When the sweet potato vines have grown to 1.5-2 m long and there are about 10 days left before transplanting to the field, the vines can be harvested; remove the leaves, keep 1 cm of leaf stalk, cut them into sections of two nodes each, tie every 200-300 sections into a bundle, plant them in the greenhouse soil or in flower pots, and water thoroughly, with a depth of about 5 cm being suitable. After about 10 days, small buds sprout from the upper part of the vine sections and a certain root system sprouts from the lower part; at this point they can be transplanted to the field. 

The root growing method for slips has the characteristics of making full use of space and producing a large number of slips, and the sweet potato roots can also yield a certain harvest of sweet potatoes in spring. When using this method to grow slips, the temperature in the greenhouse or on the house balcony should be controlled between 5-25°C, and should not be too high or too low; generally 400-600 sweet potato slips can be grown per sq m. 

3. The vine growing method for slips. The vine growing method for slips is, after the autumn sweet potato harvest, to choose robust vines free of frost damage and disease, remove the leaves, keep 1 cm of leaf stalk, and cut them into sections of two nodes each to form vine sections; the subsequent operation method is the same as the root growing method for slips. 

The above three methods for growing sweet potato slips have the characteristics of low input, easy management and low cost. They can not only turn discarded vines and roots from waste into treasure, but also save a large number of seed potatoes, eliminate the rot losses of seed potatoes in cellar storage, and save the land occupied by growing slips from seed potatoes and the field management during the slip-growing period. They have significant economic benefits and are especially suitable for small-scale implementation by farming households.