these are some instuctions that are very simular to ones i found on a variety of sites. this is how im going to make my own slits.

1) find some healthy sweet potatoes. No openings in the skin, soft spots or mold. Basically if it looks good enough to eat then you are good to go. You can find them at your local farmer's market in the fall or just go pick out some at your local grocery store or use some that you grew the previous year and stored in a cool dark place all winter.

2) Grab one sweet potato, two toothpicks and a jar or a water tight container that the potato can stand upright in without tipping over. The toothpicks will serve as a platform so that the roots have room to develop. Very Carefully push one toothpick all the way through the sweet potato about half way down . Do the same with the other toothpick and therefore making a(+)with the toothpicks if looking down on the sweet potato vertically. Sometimes it helps to twist the toothpick if it gets stuck when you are pushing it through the sweet potato.You will probably break a few toothpicks in the process.

3) Place your newly punctured sweet potato in the jar so that all four toothpick ends rest on the rim of the jar.

4)Fill the jar with water and set it in a sunny window facing East. Check the water level about every day. Make sure the jar stays full. In a few weeks purple eyes will start to emerge from the top and white roots from the bottom. Soon after, the eyes will sprout leaves. Each eye will grow into a slip. When a vine from an eye grows to six inches pinch it off where green meets purple and another slip will grow in its place.

Today i bought both white and red sweet potato tubers to grow. I plan to use the one that sprouts first.

i furthur looked into growing techniques and i need to keep the plants in alot of sunlight. the problem that im going to face is that we are heading into colder months and this means it is not exactly the prime time to be growing sweet potato plants. it requires a warm moist environment to prevent the plant from frosting and spoiling. to minimize this problem im leaving my experiment in my sun room. the room heats up almost immediately and holds warmth longer. at night i plan to keep yellow lights on it to give it warm nights.

as far as watering is concerned i need to water the rooted sprouts immediately after planning and well in the beginning of the growth cycle. when the seedlings appear i can reduce watering but need to keep the moisture level constant.

For my eperiment im going to grow my own sweet potato plant.

I can do this in two was. i can get a sweet potato, slice it in half lengthwise, then place it on a bed of damp potting soil. i am then going to place a few inches of soil ontop and keep it moist and warm. My research tells me small roots will develope in a few days followed by leaves. They will be ready to plant in 4 weeks and i need to keep them in a warm climate as much as possible.

the second way, the one im going to use is by taking an organic sweet potato, submerging it on a jar of water and leaving it untill it sprouts. once the slits appear i can plant them.

The plant im useing to test the affects of the allelopathic sweet potato is shallots because i plan to measure their growth in height depending on how far from the sweet potato it is. Height vs distance.

After some reserch on growing shallots i found the best way to grow them is to plant them 2-3 cm apart and plant each one to the same depth as the sweet potato plant.