Growing sweet potaoes

[jencooks]

I know there was a thread on this before (it's how I found this site) but can anyone tell me if it's possible to grow sweet potatoes here in N Ireland? This year, the weather was hot until the end of May, then it just rained and rained. Would it be too cold and damp for them? I'd like to know as they're lower in carbs than ordinary spuds, useful for us diabetics.
Cheers all

[okra]

Growing sweet potatoes is possible in the UK now that we have been experiencing warmer summers and there are varieties of sweet potato available that are better suited to our shorter summers.The variety of sweet potato to try is (T65) has been bred and selected for our shorter summers, the flesh of the tuber is more creamy in colour than the orange colour of tubers bought in supermarkets, and has a nicer flavour in my opinion.

Sweet potatoes are grown from shoots or "slips". Slips are produced by submerging part of a tuber into a glass or jar of water. Use matchsticks to suspend the tuber if necessary. I start my sweet potatoes off in this way around the end of January to mid-February leaving them in a bright and warm place.

[vancheese]

Cool - Can I do this in Hungary from a standard (but expensive) import sweet pototo?
Our summers are much hotter then the UK but we do have a very cold winter till march. I do live in the sunshine city :D

[okra]

Should not be a problem, the sweet potato will enjoy the hotter summer and hopefully provide a bumper crop

[niknik]

how long should it take for a sweet potato to produce these slips? are these roots?
and once they do, what then? and what sort of yield from 1?

I love them,and would love to grow some ,in fact I already have one ina pot, but nothing so far.apart from the fact that it has swiollen up a bit, but no shoots or anything.

[realfood]

Slips are shoots, not roots. See this page for information on how to grow slips :- http://www.growyourown.info/page174.html

[niknik]

thanks for that ,realfood.

very helpful.
well ¨ll just leave mine in its water and wait and see what happens!