Re: Bedding plants/Ipomoea
- To: s*@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
- Subject: Re: [SG] Bedding plants/Ipomoea
- From: M* T*
- Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 17:22:19 -0400
Well, Gerry, I've just planted the tubers, as I keep them over winter
in a pot, so just plant out the entire pot. Haven't even rooted
around in the pots to see if there are more than one tuber that could
be separated....hmmm, ought to do this next time. I just cut them
back and lift them in the fall and pot them up. Kind of a delicate
balance between not letting them get too dry and keeping them too wet
over winter, I find. Too dry and they are not happy - get spider
mites and aphids - and too wet causes rot in the cool temps in my
greenhouse.
I would imagine you could propagate from sprouts - you can do this
with Dahlias and have blooming plants the same year, but have not
tried it.
Most likely the reason edible sweet potatoes are propagated that way
is to get more plants from each tuber. Regular white potatoes are
planted from 'eyes' - you cut up a potato into chunks with budding
eyes on them and plant those - you can get quite a few plants from
each potato that way. With Dahlias, it's the same - more plants from
one tuber, plus the fact that Dahlia tubers have to have some stem
attached to sprout and bloom...tubers with no stem are blind and will
never do anything, so rooting sprouts is the easiest way of
increasing a particular clone.
Actually, the decorative leafed Ipomoea are edible, so I have read,
but have not tried them and can't remember if they need some kind of
pre-treatment, as in soaking or something to remove any substances
that aren't edible...some "edible" plants require this. Considering
how much they cost at nurseries, eating the tubers would make an
expensive dish for what you'd get out of them:-)
Marge Talt, zone 7 Maryland
mtalt@clark.net
Editor: Gardening in Shade
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From: Gerry/Bob O'Neill <eoneill@IBM.NET>
Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2000 6:45 AM
When the tubers are carried over, are they usually planted (the whole
tuber) in the spring? The usual way of propagating "real" sweet
potatoes
is to place them in moist sand of water, let them sprout, then root
the
sprouts and plant those. I've never understood why it was done that
way,
unless it was a form of thinning.
Gerry
