Elderberry Progress

After last winter, I despaired of most of my new trees, but they've done really well.

These are two of the elderberry plants I rooted last year via cuttings in a jar of water.

They're doing great!

Of the six that I planted, five lived through the winter.    This means elderberries maybe this year!   I'm so excited.  

Rooting Sweet Potato Shoots

I start my sweet potatoes in jars on the window sill.   I've seen other ways, but this takes very little counter space and works just great.  

I just shove sweet potatoes into jars, pointed side down, with part of it sticking out of the top of the jar.  If you can find potatoes with pink bumps already visible, then use those - they'll sprout faster from the top.  Leave the pink bumps at the top, out of the water.

In time, little pink sprouts pop up from the top and white roots show up under the water.  

In a couple of weeks, or when things get really warm, the sprouts will grow pretty quickly, and leaves will open up. 

If you can find a jar deep enough, just put the whole potato in deeper so the sprouts are under water, then they'll form roots at the base of each sprout.   

If you don't have really deep jars, don't worry.   Carefully twist the starts off the potato when they're a few inches tall and have a leaf open.   

Then put the sprouts in a water in a jar.  Soon they'll develop roots on their own.   

Easy squeezy!

Once you see roots, you can plant them.   Make sure you are well past the last frost date for your area.  Sweet potatoes like warm soil and hot weather. 

How to Root Your Own Sweet Potato Starts

This is the time of year to start your sweet potatoes.   It's easier than you think.

You need: sweet potatoes, water and jars.

Put the sweet potatoes in the jars.  Fill the jars with water.  Put them in the window. Let them root.

They'll send out roots like these.   The warmer they are, the faster they'll root.

I've had mine in a window and it has not been warm.  The roots have been slow to show, but they're all rooting.  As soon as it warms up, they'll show a lot more action.  

They'll shoot up leaves like these.


And in June [in zone 5], you can stick them in the ground.    I cut them up so that each start has leaves and roots.

Sweet potatoes love warm. Wait until after the last spring frost to even think about planting them. 

Elderberry Cuttings

I've been wanting elderberry bushes forever. 

For. Ever.

We bought some nice expensive ones years ago, but they died.   Since they grow wild around here, I couldn't justify buying more, so I read up and learned that they start reasonably reliably from cuttings.

Some say you should root them in water with willow twigs [which release a rooting hormone into the water].  Others say you should just stick them in the ground as soon as possible.   

I got my cuttings and stuck them in water with willow for a day -  I don't know if that was long enough to get enough hormone from the willow, but I figured it wouldn't hurt while we decided just where to put them.  

I got 6 cuttings from a neighbor whose wild bush sprouted at the mouth of a culvert, down in the ditch.   

We stuck 4 cuttings next to a wet area that grows a lot of orange grass [Acorus calamus] and we stuck 2 cuttings on the hill between the chicken coop and the veg garden where the garden drainage runs down the hill.   They'll get plenty of water there. 

We protected them with fence to keep the rabbits off them and mulched around them with cardboard so they can get a head start from the grass.  

Fingers crossed that most of them take.    I love elderberries.