Purple Japanese sweet potato (2 SLIPS) Also known as Hawaiian Purple Sweet Potato

***Edited to add: It's now the year after I received my cuttings from this seller. The cuttings which were sent to me were not Okinawan sweet potatoes--they were regular, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. There was no way for me to know this until they'd had an entire season to grow and be harvested of course, and now I've been unable to contact the seller and any protection I may have had on my purchase through Amazon has expired a long time ago. I've added a picture of what I saw when I cut one of my "Okinawan purples" open. Buyer beware. When I received my slips in the mail, I was a bit perplexed. They looked nothing like the picture, there were no leaves, little to no roots, and the stems looked more like cuttings off an adult plant than slips off a tuber. The seller had kindly included two extra cuttings (I ordered four, got six) which was nice. And it doesn't really matter whether these were slips or cuttings, since sweet potatoes can be propagated from stem cuttings just as well. However I had no idea how to do this, and there were no instructions accompanying the cuttings. My first dilemma was, should I freshen up the cuttings before I put them in water or not? So I decided to snip half the cuttings to just under the next leaf/root node and leave half the cuttings untouched. I put all six into water cups of their own and set them in a south facing window which got lots of sun. Four days later two of the cuttings (one snipped, one as shipped) had shriveled up and died, and I had a discussion with another gardener who suggested I should pot them directly in soil rather than water. So I took one of the surviving cuttings from each group and put it in moist potting soil. I now had one snipped cutting in water, one snipped cutting in soil, one "as shipped" cutting in water, and one "as shipped" cutting in soil. Nine days after that, I had my winner. The first leaves of my experiment showed up on the "as shipped" in soil cutting! 6 days after that, the snipped in soil and snipped in water both put out tiny leaves. Now this experiment is far from scientific. My specimen numbers are way too small, and my "in soil" cuttings did spend four days in water. But from the fact that the "as shipped" cutting made leaves at all-- let alone first--I think we can conclude that freshening up the cut on the mailed cuttings is not necessary. And it would seem that potting soil did better than water, so just pop those babies in some moist potting soil when they arrive and set on a sunny window (out of reach of your pet or toddler, if you have one)! All of my surviving cuttings are showing beautiful root development, so it may be that they'll thrive no matter what I do to them. I'm going to continue the experiment for my sake and may edit this post with further results if that's possible.

This is a very deceptive listing. The photos are very nice looking slips, but you will receive vine cuttings with very small growth and no roots. I unfortunately did not look at reviews before purchase. I am not one to leave reviews either, but I was so upset when I received these. If you are looking to grow them as I was, this is not the way to go. Don't waste your time and money. Try getting actual potatoes and growing your own slips.

These were so good, they came already rooted all i had to do is put them in soil and wait until it warms up and plant them in the specific place i want them to be.

What you’re gonna get is not what is pictured. When I received was dead, no leaves dried roots spouts. Absolutely unable to grow! Extremely disappointed. What is picture above is the seafood because it has leaves looks extremely healthy. Not what I got.

They started growing fast but we got a freeze and they died

Slips were all in excellent condition..all had excellent roots and have done well in soil.

I followed the directions tons, with only one of the 4 rooted stems has produced a few leaves. Only 2 of 4 shoots were living when they arrived. I would have better luck buying some purple sweet potatoes and planting pieces of it.

Slips showed up healthy.