If you’re looking for an easy way to get more sweet potatoes, taking cuttings is definitely the way to go! It’s a super simple process—the cuttings root incredibly fast, and you can even snip them in the fall right before your main harvest. By keeping these young plants indoors over the winter, you’ll have a head start for next season.
Taking Your Cuttings
Starting around September, you can start taking cuttings from your sweet potato vines. Just snip off a few healthy shoots about 8 inches long. Look for stems that have several “nodes” (those little bumps where leaves grow) and make sure they aren’t damaged. If your vine happens to be flowering, go ahead and pinch those blooms off. You can leave most of the leaves attached, but definitely strip off the ones on the bottom half of the cutting so they don’t rot when they’re submerged.
Rooting in Water
The easiest way to get roots growing is to pop your cuttings into a glass of water. Just make sure at least one leaf node is underwater, as that’s exactly where the new roots will sprout from. You’ll find that sweet potatoes sprout lightning-fast this way! Usually, you’ll see the first little white roots appearing within just a few days.
Don’t wait too long to pot them up, though. You only need a few short roots to get started. If the roots get too long and tangled in the water, they become brittle and snap off easily during planting. Plus, roots left in water for too long can eventually start to rot. Generally, your new plants will be ready for soil after about a week.
The Layering Method
Sweet potato vines are naturally “creepers,” meaning they love to root wherever they touch the ground. You’ve probably noticed this when you go to harvest your tubers—you often have to tug the long vines off the soil surface. You can actually use this to your advantage by “layering” them directly into pots.
Try to start this by September. Pick out some strong, healthy vine tips and guide them into a nearby pot filled with soil. Remove a leaf from one of the nodes and bury that section under the dirt, leaving about 6 inches of the vine tip poking out of the pot.
After about two weeks, that buried node should have a solid root system, and you can snip the vine away from the mother plant. If you prefer, you can also skip the water step entirely and plant fresh cuttings directly into potting soil. Just make sure to keep the soil consistently moist for the first two weeks. Pro tip: cover them with a clear plastic bag to create a mini-greenhouse and keep the humidity high while they establish!
