Holy Sweet Potato, Batman!

I got a pretty intense gardening bug a few weekends ago. This wacky warm-then-cold-then-warm-again weather got my juices flowing. I felt like cleaning out the front beds and putting in some color...faithful winter pansies of course. I got out there and it was beautiful! The weather was perfectly mild and breezy. Soooo....as I was pulling up the dead sweet potato vine, I pulled out a potato! I was pretty tickled with myself! I just assumed it was a fruitless, decorative vine - so then I started reading about it.


This beautiful garden isn't mine but I just wanted to show what ornamental sweet potato vine looks like. It's the chartreuse, short plant spread along the front of this person's bed. They are great because they are cheap, and you can buy them as small as they come and they grow FAST! They add great color and come in light green, light pinky-white, and "black". They spread like wildfire but you can cut them back if they go where you don't want them. I like them because they are so light and airy looking - almost like they are floating.


Here is my very first tuber! I only had one, and looks like many people get one per plant but my other plants didn't produce one. It's common, even though I am so tickled about mine you'd think they weren't that common, and of course makes sense since it IS a potato vine. If I had wanted to I could have saved it and replanted it next spring. But again, the plants are cheapies so I opted for just getting more if they are part of my design in the spring. They are part of a group of plants called tender perennials, which would come back year after year in warm climates...but here they are pretty much annuals. They are one of my new favs!


So of course we couldn't throw it away without cutting into it and checking it out! Not quite like the sweet potato I'm used to with the creamy orange color. Apparently these ornamental sweet potato tubers are edible but I don't think I'll try it.

The pansies look great though, and added that much needed winter color. They are great because they tolerate really cold weather but they'll last well into summer if it's not too hot. Man, they smelled so good. They filled the truck with their fragrance on the way home from Calloway's and even once planted I got wafts of them for days when I walked by. So sweet! I'm already digging through my gardening magazines imagining what I can do this spring....although I am fairly limited b/c most of the yard is in shade. I do love me some digging in the dirt!