Vines and Climbers: Sweet potato vine, 1 by HollyAnnS

HollyAnnS wrote:
Please excuse these pictures. It’s the end of the season, the bugs have been at them and they are definitely not showing their best. These are ornamental sweet potatoes. You can eat them but I don’t know how tasty they would be. In May of 2005 I bought some for my deck boxes at the nursery. At the end of the season while cleaning out the boxes I found sweet potatoes in the boxes. I put them in my laundry room over winter and this spring I started new ones. I put the potatoes (just one of each color) in a container of water covering just half of the potato and leaving the other half dry. First the roots started to grow from the eyes that were submerged and then the plants started to grow from the eyes that were dry. When the plants were about 3 to5 inches tall I carefully pulled them loose from the potato and put them in a small glass of water. The plants then developed roots and when the root system looked large and strong enough I transplanted them to pots and then later into my window and deck boxes. I’m not sure that’s the best way to start them but it worked very well for me. I had so many I gave them to family, friends, and coworkers. They got huge in my boxes covering and crowding out most of the other plants and they were beautiful.