Expert reveals hack for growing own food from supermarket veg

A gardening expert has revealed a hack for growing your own food from supermarket vegetables.

A former gardens manager for the Royal Horticulture Society and the National Trust has shared the secret to growing your own sweet potatoes after getting some from the supermarket.

Simon Akeroyd told his half-a-million social media followers that sweet potatoes are easy to grow yourself if you start off with a couple of sweet potatoes you can get from any supermarket. The first instruction is to give them a rinse before finding a container with holes at the bottom.

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Half-fill the container with peat-free compost and then push two sweet potatoes into the compost. “Leave on a sunny windowsill,” says Simon, “soon shoots (AKA slips) appear.

“Leave until slips are 10cm (four inches) high, then carefully remove the sweet potato slips and plonk in water.”

A helpful video on the gardener’s Instagram page shows the shoots being dunked into jars of water, with leaves emerging out of the top of the jars. The shoots should be left for two weeks until decent roots have formed, says Simon.

After that, ‘plant each sweet potato slip in a container and leave on a sunny patio or in a conservatory’.

“Each slip should provide four to six sweet potatoes this summer,” adds Simon.