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Sweet Potato Vine surprisingly in my yard! Advice needed.

Posted by carrie77 z6 St. Louis MO (My Page) on
Fri, Jul 20, 07 at 13:35

In early Spring, I bought a packet of Petunia seeds from Wal-Mart and planted them around my bird bath. Well, it turns out, the package was wrong and I have sweet potato vines growing instead!!!!! It is growing like crazy and is all around the bird bath and is quite tall. I will try to attach some pics this weekend of it. Also just a few purple flowers that seem to be closed up.
Ok, so my question is..I have no idea what type of potato vine this is.......do ALL sweet potato vines produce sweet potatoes? I wasn't sure if some are just 'decorative'. I haven't dug to see if there are any sweet potato roots. Not even sure when I'd harvest them if I were to have any.

Any advice on this would be great...I usually only grow tomatoes :)

Carrie


Follow-Up Postings:

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RE: Sweet Potato Vine surprisingly in my yard! Advice needed.

Some sweet potato vines are just decorative and should not be eaten. However, if you like the plant you can store the tubers in a cool, dark place for the winter and then plant them again next spring. I like them in containers.

Since you don't know what kind it is, you could check out the tubers in the fall after the foliage dies back. If the tubers are long, big and orange then it may be tasty. If small, round and coloured blue, red, green may be bitter.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ornamental Sweet Potato


 
 

 

 


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