The ornamental sweet potato vine is a bold tropical plant that grows as a perennial. Its foliage is more colorful compared to edible sweet potatoes. The sweet potato vine has purple foliage and can spread about 5 feet wide and 10 feet long in a single season. The ornamental sweet potatoes are bred specifically for their foliage, which can be bright purple or vivid green.
How Long Do Ornamental Sweet Potato Vines Last?
Ornamental sweet potato vines can last between 6 and 10 months. However, it would be best to store them for a short time. They will survive when kept in a moist environment, but when stored in a wet climate, the roots might rot and cause the vines to die.
Can You Eat the Potatoes from Ornamental Sweet Potato Vines?
No, you cannot eat the potatoes from ornamental sweet potato vines. The quality of its tubers is not suitable for eating because they are much better in flavor than its food crop.
Apart from the sweet potatoes tubers, you can eat the leaves or the stem, which have a slight tang flavor similar to that of spinach. They are popularly enjoyed as a vegetable all over the world.
Is Ornamental Sweet Potato Toxic?
Yes. The ornamental sweet potato vines are highly toxic and poisonous to dogs and other pets. For this reason, when you have uprooted your sweet potatoes, do not leave the debris where your pets can reach it and start eating it.
When your pets eat them, they will vomit, have diarrhea, feel nauseated, and have mouth irritation, which could lead to death.
Is Ornamental Sweet Potato Vine Poisonous to Dogs?
Yes. The ornamental sweet potato vine is poisonous to dogs since it’s among the toxic ingredients with similar factors as lysergic acid diethylamide. When dogs eat vines, they experience many problems that may lead them to die.
The following some five problems that your dog might under go when it takes ornamental potato vines:
1. Irritation of mouth
2. Hallucination
3. Seizure
4. Diarrhea
5. Vomiting
How Do You Overwinter Ornamental Sweet Potato Vines?
You can use several methods to overwinter the ornamental sweet potato vines.
Consider the following three steps to overwinter sweet potatoes:
1. You can bring the sweet potato vines indoors and keep them as houseplants.
2. You can cut them into pieces and bring them indoors for the winter season.
3. Store the ornamental sweet potato vine tubers.
Why Is My Ornamental Sweet Potato Vine Dying?
The ornamental sweet potato vine can die from soil insects such as rootworms, wireworms, white grubs, weevils, and flea beetles. The weevil is an insect that affects the roots of a sweet potato plant.
You can use marigolds to protect your vines from different pests, and you can also use spinosad (Monterey Garden insect spray), a highly recommended biopesticide for potato beetles.
Do Ornamental Sweet Potato Vines Bloom?
Yes. The ornamental sweet potato vines bloom at the end of their growing season, generally in late spring. At this time, you will see some flowers that remained open only in the morning and faded by the afternoon.
The flowers will bloom from the junction of leaves and stems, which might be in clusters or singles.
Will Ornamental Sweet Potato Vine Climb a Trellis?
No. Naturally, the ornamental sweet potato vines are not climbers; they crawl along the ground. Their vines form roots along their stems as they crawl on the floor. After a few days, you will find sweet potato tubers.
Only by training your ornamental sweet potato vine can it climb a trellis. During the training, you must be careful since the stem is easy to break off, and you should not injure the plant.
Is Ornamental Sweet Potato Vine Deer Resistant?
Yes. The ornamental sweet potato vines are generally deer-resistant because they are warm-season plants. Pets can use them as a staple food during the spring season. Sweet potato vines typically come back after deer browse on them. The most deer-resistant plants include poppies, foxgloves, and daffodils.
The ornamental sweet potato vines are very attractive to deer, so you should be careful whether the vines are ornamental or planted for tubers. Note that deer like sweet potato vines, and therefore they can cause extensive and frequent damage to your potato plants. You can save your plants from becoming deer food by protecting both the plant and the garden from pesky invaders.
How Do You Propagate Ornamental Sweet Potato Vines?
There are some different methods used to propagate the ornamental sweet potato vines.
Below are three factors you used to reproduce your potato vines:
1. Cutting
It would be best if you cut off the stem of a plant to create a clone of the same plant. Not only do stems propagate, but leaves can also propagate when you cut them off. The pieces will be planted separately and start growing independently.
2. Division
The division method can be used to propagate potato vines by separating the stems from the original plant and dividing them into sections. Each piece can be grown separately as a single plant.
3. Transplanting
This method allows you to move the plants from one point to the main point. It involves rotating the planting of sweet potato slips into a protected location, such as a nursery, and then transferring them to the primary site to be transplanted for further growth and development.
How Do You Take Care of Ornamental Sweet Potato Vines?
The care of ornamental sweet potato vines is usually done by watering them during drought season to keep the soil wet but not too wet, which may cause the roots to rot.
When you prune the ornamental sweet potato vein, use a sharp tool such as scissors, a sharp knife, or a razor blade to cut pieces around 1-3 inches above the leaves. Submerge the cut end in a container of cold water for about a week, and the cuts will develop roots at the bottom.
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