The last 2 days I haven't had that much to do concerning P.M. because most of the plants I have chosen to grow are warm/hot weather plants and I hadn't planned on growing my own seedlings. The spinach still needs to be tended to on an every other day basis and checked on everyday but it has yet to germinate. Not that I was expecting my spinach to be super spinach or anything but at the moment the container and faerie plot are a bit on the boring side. I did add the markers to the empty garden, mostly because I am impatient but also as a test. I wanted to make sure that all of the nail polish products used would withstand the rain. Now that they are completely dry I may add a topcoat of clear polish to ensure there survival. Other than that I did a little sweeping, tossing of old plant material, and mulching in the area next to my little garden just so that it all looked uniform and neat. That turned out fine. Just fine.
I found a few old but beautiful tiles laying behind a bush in the driveway and grabbed 3 of one design (yellow and white swirl) and 2 of another (unsure of how to describe). I cleaned them up with a little all-purpose cleaner and laid them out in a left-right upward pattern on each side of the bed. I placed the spinach container on top of the first tile to the left. I think they add a little something. That took all of 30 minutes and then it was back inside.
Slips...
I was going through Pinterest while watching RHoBH. I usually go through the garden section before bed just to get a few ideas or read about interesting projects people are trying. As I was going through Pinterest I saw a pin that said "Start garden with kitchen scraps." I didn't click on it to see what the article had to say but the title got me thinking. As I thought it came to me that they must be talking about veggies that get old in your pantry and start to sprout roots or stems. That made me think of onions, garlic, and finally sweet potatoes. The last being an veggie I plan to grow.
Memory...
I remembered that one day about a year ago Mike and I were going through the kitchen to find something to munch on and found a few sweet potatoes with funny looking "roots." At the time we were both saying things like "Look at this" and "weird" and "Bah" (toss in face). We had a good laugh then tossed the "ruined" potatoes in the garbage.
Little did I know...I went upstairs to see if we had any sweet potatoes in the pantry with "roots" on them. I hadn't yet Googled "How to grow sprouted S.P's" or anything. I just thought I'd need a couple sweet potatoes with "roots" if I was going to experiment. I found 3. Then I Googled. I found out that you can start with any sweet potato no, what I now knew are slips and not roots, needed but that if they do have slips starting already that you were in better shape than if not. So I read on and found two different methods of creating slips from grocery store sweet pots. 1) using tooth picks to suspend the S.P. submerged halfway in water in a glass container with the slip end up 2) set the sweet potato on top of a little moist soil slip end up.
Both methods required a warm spot to work. At first the fact that there were two methods confused me. One in only water and one in little water, that didn't seem right. So I found a video that really helped on YouTube, How To Grow Your Own Sweet Potato Slips/Plants. The woman in the video documents growing slips both ways over the course of about 4 weeks. Both approaches worked well. She also explained the part that the written articles did not mention or didn't explain properly... after the slips have grown (both methods) you must snap them off and submerge the bottom in water to root, then plant if it's warm enough. Without this little nugget of info my slips my have made it through the first step but they never would have become potatoes. I had all the information on growing slips that I needed and the time to try it.
Bored no more...
I'm psyched for tomorrow! I'll set up both methods on a windowsill in the house and spend the next few weeks attempting to grow my own slips. I'll use the 3 I'd found with slips already forming and 1 without as a small test within my test. Also, that will even it out 2 for each method. If they all don't work out I'll just buy them at the local Home Depot or nursery. I'm really excited to try it either way. The potatoes with just the slips on them were beautiful and it would be great to say I started the plants from scratch, basically. Problem of nothing to do for my garden until ALFD, solved!
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