On Wed, 7 Apr 2004 12:34:59 -0700, "Greg"
wrote:

Hello all: New at starting a garden here. I wanted to plant some potatoes;
the person at home depot told me to put toothpicks in a potato, wait till
they sprout, and then plant them. Is this true? And if so,

1. Do I take the toothpicks out after I "puncture" them and then the
sprouts grow out of the holes, or do I leave the toothpicks in?

2. Do I bury the whole potato, sprouts and all or do I let the sprouts
stick through the soil?


That's a sweet potato. It will work with a sweet potato.
It won't work with an Irish (or white, or regular) potato,
as far as I know. Better to buy seed potatoes at a nursery
or garden center.

Sweet potato: suspend a sweet potato in a glass or jar of
water, pointy end up, with about half of the sweet potato in
the water and about half out of the water. You can suspend
it by toothpicks (which tend to break) or nails (which works
well).

The sweet potato will get sprouts - shoots - all over the
half that's not in the water. There will be quite a few of
them. When each shoot has some leaves and is
....oh...[shrugs] maybe six inches long, you can twist it off
the sweet potato and plant it in the ground AFTER ALL DANGER
OF FROST IS PAST AND THE GROUND IS WARM.

Even so, you're not going to know what variety of sweet
potato will be growing and maybe it wouldn't be suited to
your area. You'd be better off to buy small sweet potato
plants - these are called 'slips' - of a variety which might
do well in your area.

Alternatively, you can plant the whole affair in a large pot
and have a pretty vining house plant, or a pretty vine for
your front porch in summer. It wants a sunny location, of
course. And this won't produce you any sweet potatoes.

Pat