Mature In Slips

This time of year, some of the prettiest produce on the shelves at my local organic market are sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas). Unlike many other crops, the quality of sweet potatoes improves in storage, so they taste better now than they did in November. But as their dormancy period ends and sweet potato tubers begin to sprout, growing sweet potatoes from slips (rooted cuttings) becomes a fun springtime project.

mature in slips

Sweet potatoes are grown from rootable cuttings, often called slips. If you've never grown sweet potatoes before, it can be great fun to grow your own slips from small or medium-size sweet potatoes purchased at the market. One sweet potato will produce between three and five slips. This process takes about six weeks, so there is no need to hurry. At the Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa, Glenn Drowns emphasizes the importance of planting sweet potatoes after the weather turns warm and stable, in early summer. In my garden, the soil is not warm enough for sweet potatoes until the middle of June.

As a kid, I had fun sticking toothpicks around the middle of promising-looking sweet potatoes so I could suspend the other end in a jar of water and thereby grow a robust vining plant. This method works when conditions are right, or the result can be a scummy rotting sweet potato. A better idea is to nestle a sweet potato tuber diagonally in a bed of moist potting soil, with the sprouting end pointing up. Kept warm and lightly moist, the tuber will quickly sprout shoots that leaf out into vines. As the shoots, or slips, grow to 6 inches (15 cm) long, they can be broken off and transplanted to the garden, or to containers if outdoor conditions are too cold.

You can buy bundles of sweet potato slips if you are growing sweet potatoes in a big way, or you can use the bucket of sand method. Fill a bucket halfway with damp sand, and then lay in several sweet potatoes, half buried in the damp sand. Keep the bucket in a warm place, and it will be overflowing with slips in four to six weeks.

Before ordering slips, make sure that you have a long enough growing season to actually grow sweet potatoes. Most varieties will take about 90 to 120 days to mature. See your frost dates and length of growing season. Also, make sure you time your order with your planting dates in mind!

I have grown sweet potatoes the last two years with good results. To get my slips, I place a sweet potato in a small vase and fill with water with half of the potato out of the water. The roots start to grow and it produces the growth out of the half of the potato. After the growth is 3 to 4 inches tall I snip them off and place in a cup of water to root for a few days to a week. I will be planting them as soon as Thursday. I also intend to let the long vines grow up a fence this year to save space.

Growing a sweet potato plant starts with producing slips from a sweet potato root. The timing is important if you want to grow large and tasty sweet potatoes. This plant loves warm weather and should be planted when the soil reaches 65 degrees F. (18 C.). The slips take about eight weeks to mature, so you should be starting sweet potato slips about six weeks before your last frost date in the spring.

Take the slips from the sweet potato root by twisting them while tugging on the slip. Once you have the slip in hand, place it in a glass or jar of water for about two weeks, until fine roots have developed on the slip.

Plant the rooted slips in the garden, burying them completely and spacing them 12 to 18 inches (31-46 cm.) apart. Keep the slips well-watered until you see green shoots appear, then water normally along with the rest of the garden.

Pineapples propagate vegetatively (without flowers) in a variety ways. The crown of leaves at the top of the fruit can be planted. This is the most common source for home gardeners adding pineapples to their landscape. A number of kinds of pups (offshoots of the parent plant) also grow along a pineapple's stem, below the fruit. These are called slips, suckers, or hapas depending where on the plant they grow. Pups also emerge from the stem below ground and then are called ratoons.

Gardeners looking for a lesson in patience will find one as they wait for a pineapple harvest. Plants take about 14 to 18 months to reach mature size. Times vary based on cultural practices and on whether you began with a crown, a sucker, or a slip.

Once the plant is mature and has about 70-80 leaves, a flower stem begins to form. Flowers begin opening after about 50 days. Individual flowers remain open for only a day, but the plant continues flowering for 20-40 days before the fruit begins to develop. Depending on the climate, variety, and care, a home gardener will wait five to seven additional months for the fruit to ripen.

Only one fruit is produced per pineapple plant. Sometimes you can harvest a second crop, the ratoon crop. Remove all pups but one ratoon (a pup emerging from underground). This pup will develop into a mature plant and produce a fruit in the same space. A second harvest gives you time to plant the largest of the pups you removed and bring them to maturity. By alternating between new plants and ratoon harvests you can enjoy a continuous supply of pineapples.

Sweet potato slips are tiny sweet potato sprouts that are planted to grow more sweet potatoes. Unlike regular potatoes, where the whole tuber is planted, sweet potatoes are grown from slips without planting the actual sweet potato.

Planting. Plant sweet potato slips in low mounds or ridges not more than 6 inches high. Set slips 4 inches deep and from 18 to 36 inches apart. Add aged compost to the planting hole and plant slips up to their bottom leaves. Prepare the soil ahead of time by turning it 10 to 12 inches deep; sweet potatoes like mounded soil because it warms quicker and loose soil because they can swell without hindrance.

Sweet potatoes aren't started by seed like most other vegetables, they're started from slips. Slips are shoots grown from a mature sweet potato. Learn how to grow and when to harvest sweet potatoes and also how to cure your sweet potatoes after the harvest.

You can order slips from a mail order or Internet catalog or you can start slips from a sweet potato you bought at the store or one from your garden. If you buy a potato from the store, be sure to find out if you're getting a bush type or a vining type. Bush types are still vining, but much shorter than those considered to be vining types.

To start your slips, you need several healthy, clean sweet potatoes. Each sweet potato can produce up to 50 slip sprouts. To create sprouts, carefully wash your potatoes and cut them either in half or in large sections. Place each section in a jar or glass of water with half of the potato below the water and half above. Use toothpicks to hold the potato in place.

Once your sweet potatoes have sprouted, you have to separate them into plantable slips. To do this, you take each sprout and carefully twist it off of the sweet potato. Lay each sprout in a shallow bowl with the bottom half of the stem submerged in water and the leaves hanging out over the rim of the bowl.

Within a few days roots will emerge from the bottom of each new plant. The new slips are ready to plant when the roots are about an inch long. To keep your slips healthy, be sure to keep the water fresh and discard any slip that isn't producing roots or looks like it's wilting.

Before you plant sweet potato slips, you have a little extra work to do. Sweet potatoes need loose, well-drained soil to form large tubers. You don't want the roots to face resistance when they try to expand within the soil. Loose soil is more critical than almost any other factor when it comes to growing sweet potatoes successfully.

Be careful not to bruise the new plant. Sweet potatoes don't like to be bruised or bumped around too much. Gently press the surrounding dirt to set the plant and to remove any remaining air pockets. Continue the same way until all of your slips are planted.

Sweet potato plants spread and quickly cover an area, and they will root into the soil at leaf nodes. Bush types may be 3 feet long while some vining types get up to 20 feet long. Space your plants accordingly. It's generally recommended to space slips 12-18 inches apart.

Water the slips once all of the slips are in place. You'll need to give them a thorough soaking until all of the surrounding dirt is wet. New plants, like slips, need to be watered every day for the first week and every other day the second week.

Newly acquired full azimuth 3D seismic in conjunction with modern azimuthal acquisition and processing, and a fresh review of the regional structural model, has enabled the identification of strike-slip faults with greater certainty. Strike-slip faults are often difficult to identify in traditionally processed seismic due to the lack of vertical displacement. The resulting improvement in structural detail in the geological models has provided a better match with well production, performance and reservoir connectivity in mature Cooper Basin fields. The structural interpretation is independently supported by Pressure Transient Analysis (PTA) and image log data in one of the fields.

The integrated approach combining new full azimuth 3D seismic data with regional structural concepts, well performance and dynamic behaviour has led to the identification of new development and appraisal opportunities in several mature fields. Application of this multidisciplinary approach, including the structural model, seismic interpretation and analysis of dynamic data is recommended for all fields throughout the Cooper Basin with suitable full azimuth seismic data. This process should be embedded in future field development plans.

As a result of gradual coronary occlusion, coronary collaterals are stimulated to develop. This maturation process involves not only dilatation of the vessel, but the development of new vascular smooth muscle. Experiments have been performed to examine vasomotor characteristics of mature coronary collaterals from dogs 3 to 6 months following ameroid constrictor placement. Studies in Langendorff blood-perfused hearts have shown that transcollateral resistance does not change during either the administration of alpha 1- or alpha 2-adrenergic agonists. Isolated collateral vessels studied as rings in organ chambers do not constrict to either alpha 1- or alpha 2-adrenergic agonists. These studies show that mature collateral vessels are not likely to possess functioning alpha-adrenergic receptors. Subsequent experiments using a cover slip autoradiographic ligand-binding approach have demonstrated a population of beta-adrenergic receptors on mature coronary collaterals. Studies of isolated collaterals have demonstrated beta-adrenoceptor-mediated relaxation that appears due to a population of mixed beta 1- and beta 2-adrenergic receptors. Subsequent studies have demonstrated that mature collateral vessels are hyperresponsive to the vasoconstrictor effects of vasopressin and that concentrations of vasopressin which may be encountered in pathophysiologic conditions can markedly attenuate coronary collateral perfusion. Finally, the microcirculation of the collateral-dependent myocardium develops endothelial cell dysfunction. This results in impaired endothelium-dependent relaxations to adenosine diphosphate and acetylcholine and enhanced vasoconstriction to vasopressin. These alterations of the coronary circulation may have important implications regarding neurohumoral regulation of myocardial perfusion in collateral-dependent myocardium. 041b061a72