When driving around neighborhoods or commercial gardening sites, you may have noticed pots or flowerbeds with long light green chartreuse or dark purple leafed vines spilling over flowerpots or out of hanging baskets.
Most likely, you are seeing the ornamental sweet potato vine.
I was introduced to this great plant and now it’s use has moved out of the flowerpots and is planted with greater frequency as a quick growing annual ground cover among annual flowers.
The Ornamental sweet potato vine, Ipomoea batatas, is a true sweet potato complete with tubers. Thought the vine is selected for its bolder and more colorful foliage than its vegetable sibling it is not as sweet as those tubers, which are grown for eating.
Though related distantly to morning glories, which are started with seed, cuttings are usually taken from an existing vine or a cut portion of a tuber to begin new vine propagation.
Sweet Potato Vine likes a sunny, moist well-drained soil and often times will appear to wilt in the hot mid-day sun. With a quick watering, the vine perks right up.
There are three main colors of sweet potato vine. The varieties and colors are:
- 'Blackie' which has deep purple to nearly black foliage with large, deep cut leaves.
- 'Marguerite' has bold, chartreuse green, heart-shaped leaves
- 'Tricolor' is a less-vigorous variety with multi-colored variegated leaves in shades of green, white, and pink
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