What specific problem have you had? Growing the slips to plant? How do you do it?

From what I have read the Okinawan variety is almost impossible to get slips to sprout but the All Purple variety grows slips quite easily.

Plus given your source - the flea market - even if you have the right variety it could have been treated to resist sprouting, just be too old and dry, etc.

If you can get slips to grow then the rest of the process is just like regular sweets - trim them from the potato, root them, and plant.

Dave

I put the purple fleshed sweet potatoes( white skin) in the jars to start the splits, after 2 weeks, all got rotted, I changed the water everyday. May be you are right, all have been treated. Thx

The ones with the white skins are the Okinawans and several report that growing slips from them is almost impossible but I don't know why. If you have more try 1/2 burying one in damp potting soil and keep it damp. That often works better than in water.

The easiest to grow slip from are the variety called All Purple and they have purple skins.

Dave

I tried to grow some from the market and they failed also... From my understanding, another way of keeping them from sprouting is to kill the outer layer of skin with heat.. So you may have noticed if you nick the skin, it may have been already a dark purple inside. I don't know if it's true for all,a but the live one's that I've seen are mostly whitish inside and only have a faint hint of purple. They turn dark purple when fully cooked. The skin doesn't look fully white either, like the ones in the supermarket unless you get all the dirt off.

I've heard of some people getting lucky and obtaining them by growing cuttings of sweet potatoe leaves and stems that were meant for cooking but I wouldn't know what to look for... My mom used to grow one with purple leaves but it was the full purple variety.

I tried to grow some from the market and they failed also... From my understanding, another way of keeping them from sprouting is to kill the outer layer of skin with heat.. So you may have noticed if you nick the skin, it may have been already a dark purple inside. I don't know if it's true for all,a but the live one's that I've seen are mostly whitish inside and only have a faint hint of purple. They turn dark purple when fully cooked. The skin doesn't look fully white either, like the ones in the supermarket unless you get all the dirt off.

I've heard of some people getting lucky and obtaining them by growing cuttings of sweet potatoe leaves and stems that were meant for cooking but I wouldn't know what to look for... My mom used to grow one with purple leaves but it was the full purple variety.

Did you keep them warm when starting slips? 85 degrees is best (water temperature). Use a heat mat.

I had the same bad luck with what my local organic market calls Japanese sweet potatoes (reddish purple on the outside, white on the inside). They rotted and got all slimy when I tried the cut it in half and put it in a jar method.

Then I put a whole one in a bowl of water (covering about a third of the potato, which was tilted on the side of the bowl) and left it on my front porch in mid- April and forgot about it for weeks. When I would look every so often, nothing was happening- no rotting but no slips. Just a sweet potato sitting in a bowl of water. I'm sure the mailman thought I was crazy (it's right under the mailbox).

Then, once we started to have very warm sunny days, it started growing slips like wildfire. The porch is protected from wind but gets lots and lots of sun all day. Maybe they just needed the warmth?

The bigger slips are now growing in pots and the potato is still producing new slips. I'm hoping for a good harvest. The potato is still totally firm so I'm wondering if I can eat it once I take off all the slips?

http://www.stokesfoods.com/nutrition.htm

Since the Stokes Purple is locally grown in the USA, it is NOT irradiated before it reaches the consumer. Other varieties of purple sweet potatoes that are imported from overseas must be irradiated when they enter the USA. Also, Stokes Purples have not been genetically modified in any way and are classified as Non-GMO sweet potatoes.

Just planted the purple skin purple fleshed sweet potatoes slips ordered from Georges Plant Farm.

I dug some of the purple skin purple fleshed sweet potatoes last week, It tastes good to me, next year I will grow more .