Sweet potatoes contain calcium, potassium, carotenoids, copper, quercetin, vitamin-A (the richest source), vitamin-C and vitamin-E.
Carotenoids are plant compounds that squelch cell damage caused by everyday living and challenging workouts. Potassium is a mineral necessary for muscle contraction, nerve transmission, bone health, water balance, and normal blood pressure (sweet potatoes have it more than bananas, believe it or not.)
Quercetin is a potent phytonutrient that may help you breathe easier by warding off allergies, hay fever, and asthma.
Sweet potatoes have more powerful nutritional benefits than yams do. Sweet potatoes and yams are both healthy foods, and they also look similar. Sweet potatoes, however, have higher concentrations of most nutrients and more fiber.
So, these vegetables are a nutritional powerhouse, ideal whether you are trying to cut carbs and lose weight—or bulk up and build muscle.
How to regrow sweet potato plant indoors – It’s a piece of cake, take my word for it!
The versatility of sweet potatoes means they are a firm favorite with any home cook. Sweet potatoes are grown from plants, not seeds or bulbs. You can purchase sweet potato plants at a garden center or online. You can also grow your own plants.
Here we share a tutorial on how to grow more of them using nothing but a sweet potato:
1. Get a firm healthy sweet potato for your new plant.
If the sweet potato is starting to sprout, you have a head start. Assume that most grocery store sweet potatoes are treated with an anti-sprouting chemical. Look for organic sweet potatoes or get from a gardening friend. My sweet potatoes came from my mom and a friend. I don’t know what variety they are, but both of them had excellent sweet potato crops last year and they kept very well all winter.
2. Place the sweet potato in a jar of water.
You need to submerse most of the sweet potato while allowing a couple of inches above water. One of my sweet potatoes was so large that it couldn’t fit well in the jar. Change the water occasionally to keep it from molding.
Place in sunlight. Soon the sweet potato will send out sprouts, or slips.
3. When the sprouts are 4 to 5 inches long, pull them off the sweet potato.
The sweet potato will grow more sprouts.
4. Place the sprouts in water.
You can place a bunch of sprouts in the same jar. They will quickly grow roots.
5. When the sprout is well-rooted, plant it in a hill of soil about 10 inches high.
Wait until the soil is warm. Keep the plants well-watered while the roots are being established. We like to mulch the hill to keep back the weeds as the sweet potato grows. While sweet potatoes cannot be planted too early because they hate cold weather, they also cannot be planted too late. Sweet potatoes need several months of growing time before the first frost to form tubers.
Some years I have started my sweet potato plants too late. They need adequate time to root before being planted outside. I have found that the beginning of March is a good time to start these plants.