3 tips for growing Sweet Potato Vine

It’s related to the root vegetable you enjoy cooking but you grow the ornamental Sweet Potato Vine for its large, fancy leaves. These range from deep burgundy to bright white. To add this stunning feature to your yard design, follow these tips.

There are scores of varieties of Sweet Potato Vine but one which might catch your eye is 'Blackie' with its maple-leaf shaped, deep purple leaves. It’s perfect for cascading over the edge of containers or adding colour accents to flower beds. These other types might fit the bill for your yard design too:

• 'Margarita' is a variety with abundant, silky, heart-shaped, chartreuse leaves on thick, wandering stems. It grows swiftly providing a carpet-like the soil with its plush, golden leaves.
• 'Tricolour' has smaller, heart-shaped leaves variegated with rose pink, white, and green. Its growth tends to be less robust than that of the other two, making it more appropriate for containers, where you can tend it easily.

It’s interesting to see what sunlight does to the colour of your Sweet Potato Vine. All varieties like the sun. Keep in mind the following when growing your vine:

• The dark burgundy leaves of ‘Blackie’ fade to burgundy when the light is low.
• 'Margarita' grows equally well in sun or light shade, but in full sun the leaves attain striking red edges. As shade increases, the leaves of 'Margarita' glow with more of a golden hue, and often become larger, reaching 10 to 12 centimetres in width.
• Sweet potato vines thrive in hot summer weather but wilt when rain is scarce.
• Weekly watering is usually sufficient in beds, but sweet potato vines in containers usually need water daily to prevent wilt.
• Avoid leaf spotting from sunburn by watering early or late in the day, when the sun doesn't shine directly on the leaves.
• As care-free as sweet potato vines are, their juicy, big leaves do attract slugs, especially in damp, shady environments. If you see numerous clean-edged holes in the leaves, set out slug traps in the evening. Use either commercial traps or shallow saucers of beer. The yeasty smell attracts slugs, which crawl in and drown.
• Entire leaves that disappear overnight are usually the work of foraging deer. Tucking a bar of deodorant bath soap into plantings is a good deterrent.

Once your Sweet Potato Vine is thriving, take some cuttings for future plantings:

• Take a cutting of 10 centimetres long from stem tips of any sweet potato vine. It will root in a week in a glass of water.
• As soon as roots appear, plant the cuttings in a pot of loose, fertile potting soil, set it in a shady place, and water it daily.
• You can transplant the young plants to the garden or a container outdoors two weeks later, in warm weather.
• Sweet potato vines prefer warm soil and are quickly killed in frosty conditions.
• As sweet potato vines do produce tubers, you can dig those swollen roots in fall, before soil temperatures drop below 13°C.
• Store them over the winter in a paper bag in a cool, dark location.
• To start growth in spring, replant the tubers, laying them on their sides five centimetres below the soil surface, after the soil warms in late spring.

Growing this extravagant and varied leafy plant is easy. If you follow these tips, you can look forward to Sweet Potato Vine gracing your garden for years to come.