Where would you buy them?

I know they like heat, so they should grow there. Sweet potatoes grow from slips. You can either buy slips or grow your own. Youtube has lots of videos on growing sweet potato slips. I'm growing some right now.

How do you get the slips to sprout?

I'm using untreated potatoes. I washed them and cut them lengthwise, then laid the cut sides on soil in my greenhouse, covered loosely with plastic to increase humidity. They've been there a couple of months and done nothing.

This was after trying other sweet potatoes in water on my kitchen windowsill.

Extension service pages say warm and humid, so I am trying to provide that. They are on a soil heat pad. I'm frustrated!

to gets slips to produce roots stand them in water, or just plant them out, see our presentation, works every time.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens growing sweet 'taters and pineapples

THANK YOU!!!!!

I tried to root sweet potatoes in cups filled with water I put a tooth picks in the potatoes to have half of it covered by water and the other half clear of water on the top. Yes it sprouted and rooted but all I got is 4 plants for all this work. This year I ordered 50 plants from a nursery but they ship it at a later date according to my zone. I think sweet potatoes needs lots of sun and heat more importantly the soil temp has to be in the 60 range. probably my soil temp is in 40 range right now. Although it is warming up in our area my fruit trees has its pods swelling and forming green leaves and I have flowers on the apricot and peach trees I am praying for NO frost.
Abe

Sweet potatoes are a vine, not a true potato.

While you can get them to spout...and you can take those spouts and make new plants out of them...it's ideal to get those "sprouts" long enough to transplant on their own.

They can kinda be reproduced like a potato, but they don't work like a potato.

If you get enough of a sprout going on and get it into the soil it should form a root system.

You're not going to get as many sprouts as you would on a seed potato as far as sprouting goes, though.

My problem is with getting untreated sweet potatoes, NOT slips, to sprout.

Anybody have suggestions? I'm giving them as much heat and humidity as I can.

I've rooted both sweet potatoes (for their roots) and Yam (for their leaves) and successfully transplanted and grew in the East Bay (of San Francisco). I think they would like Sacramento even better.

I buy them from the Farmers Market, where they were grown locally, and root them like Nina, Len, and Abe said. Usually I save and root the eyes, and have the rest for dinner.

I have never seen anything that roots better than sweetpotato vines. I over wintered a few vines in the greenhouse. They just barely survived. But all I had to do was cut off some ends, place them in water for a few days, then set in pots.

Even the vines themselves will root, it does not have to be ends. Cut off about a six or eight inch section and treat as above. If the fall, you can bring in a few cuttings to root as house plants and as a source for spring cuttings.

Mine grew great in LA, harvested & roasted them to discover you need to age the tubers at high temps and humidity for weeks or they taste like cardboard -- something that wasn't happening for me in Oct. Tossed 'em all, back to growing taters for me, I'll buy the sweet potatoes somebody else has cured.

Curing sweet potatoes here in Georgia is as simple as spreading the freshly dug taters out in a single layer in the sunniest spot in the tardy and letting them lay for a week. They're done when digging wounds are completely scabbed over and sealed. The texture and feel of the skin will be dry and firm as well but it is a more subtle difference.
If I lived in a cooler climate or had to deal with a cold snap I think putting them in an enclosed car or some other solar heated enclosure.

In colder climates, you can cure sweet potatoes near a running furnace, or in a box with an incandescent light bulb for heat.

best source for slips

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/

Here is a link that might be useful: slips and info