Cathy Isom fills you in on why you should be growing sweet potato vines for a double food harvest. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Whether you’re embracing the Paleo lifestyle or just craving something new, add sweet potatoes to the menu. But, did you know that the leaves are edible too? Unlike regular potatoes, sweet potatoes can be grown as a dual-purpose crop. Like beets, carrots, turnips, and radishes, sweet potato greens are an edible and delicious addition to your dinner table.
Growing dual purpose plants is a great way to take your garden from conventional to sustainable! In fact, dual purpose food plants can practically double your yield while filling your table with variety.
As far as sweet potatoes go, this plant’s greens can be harvested several times during the growing season, giving added efficiency to your grow bed. Instead of harvesting your sweet potatoes once, at the end of their long growing season, you can have a continual harvest.
These delightful tubers need at least 90 days of growth before they can be harvested. Sweet potatoes are a tropical plant, so in the summer, when your lettuce is wilting and your spinach is bolting, these greens will still be fresh and tender.
Harvesting the greens will also help you grow larger potatoes! In fact, cutting back your sweet potato vine allows the plant to put more energy into its roots. Cut back the vines, and teach your plants to focus on growing the tubers instead.
I’m Cathy Isom…