Sweet Potato Vine Love

Good Morning Dear Readers,

The weather here has been doing its usual spring thing: one day hot and sunny, the next cool and breezy, another rainy and gray.  But the flora world seems to be loving it just the same.  In fact, my perennials are sprouting and springing up in luxurious clumps all over my gardens.

That even goes for indoors!  What??? I know... how can an indoor plant be influenced by the outside weather, you ask.  Well, it can't really, but I wanted to share with you a funny incident that happened in my kitchen produce basket involving a quirky sweet potato. I usually store onions and potatoes in a wire basket on my kitchen counter.  For some reason, I had one lone sweet potato among a stack of russets.  One day, I was cleaning out fading produce when I spied a clump of small dark green leaves poking out of the bottom of the stack.  I pulled out the lone sweet potato and was surprised to see that one end of the spud had a prett y thick growth of quarter-sized leaves.  Hmmm....guess I wasn't cooking with this one. The sight of the blossoming sweet potato triggered a childhood memory of sweet potatoes soaking in jars on the window sill of my classroom, getting ready to plant a Mother's Day surprise.  I bet many of you have a similar memory.  So, I thought, what the heck, might as well go all the way with this potato since it wants to become a plant so badly.  I plopped it into a ceramic pot from my gardening supplies in the garage, added some water to the pot and set it in the sunroom to sprout roots.  It just loved the special treatment.  Within two weeks it grew lovely thick roots and even more leaves. This past weekend, I decided to plant it in a large container on my patio.  I'll keep you posted on the progress, but here are a few photos of the planting session; it's a very simple process.

all sprouted and ready to plant

Best to have thick growth of roots and leaves; be patient

Be sure to add drainage to pot to prevent root rot

pot the potato!

I added a trellis to help the vines as they grow