Sweet Potato Vines from Spaaaace!

by Marie
(Leominster, MA USA)

Part of my yard is terraced, supported by a stone wall with three steps to move between the levels. It's a lovely spot - in fact, my husband & I were married in a flower-draped arbor we placed at the top of those steps, with our guests seated in chairs on the lower level.

Most of our yard is populated with perennials, but we like to reserve the flowerbed above the stone wall for annuals, just to have some variety from year to year. We always choose one plant that cascades down, as those look especially nice hanging over the old mossy stones.

One year we decided to try sweet potato vines, at a friend's suggestion... and that's when the Trouble began...

I learned the hard way never to plant sweet potato vines in open flowerbeds because they are actually alien beings that want to TAKE OVER THE PLANET!! AIIIEEEEEE!

Seriously, I planted some of these over the stone wall, alongside a wide selection of other annuals, and within a month, you couldn’t even SEE the other plants I’d put in there, as they were getting smothered by the sweet potato vines. I had to cut them back *severely* three or four times over the course of the summer, which in Massachusetts is really just June through the first week in September, i.e. not that long a stretch of time, for a plant to cycle so many times through such out-of-control growth.

That fall, when I was cleaning out my flowerbeds, and carting away several wheelbarrowfuls of sweet potato vines, I found actual potatoes buried in my flowerbed. And I’m not talking about little things, I’m talking about massive ones, potatoes as big as three or four fists together! I asked my friend whose bright idea it was to plant them, if they were edible, but she wasn’t sure, so I didn’t take the chance. (Turns out they are, but they still scare me…)

It was at that point that I vowed never to put these plants in an open bed ever again, because they get too unmanageable with all that space and soil available to them. If I use them at all, it’s just in container gardening for a contrast color.

But even there, they start creeping down and crawling across my patio… heyyyy, what’s that I feel climbing up my ankle? … wait… wait… no, it can’t be… nooooooOOOOOOOOO AHHHHGGGHHHHhh!!!