I'm new to sweet potato gardening. But this is turning out to be a lot of fun. Each crop or vegetable has it's own personality. Likes and dislikes and habit of existing and growing. It's quite something to meet these personalities who have appeared in the material world in these particular "families."
Sweet potato is amazing. They are completely different from the other kind of potato. The other potato is a member of the nightshade family and can be poisonous under certain circumstance. If the tuber is green, and certainly the leaves and stems are not edible. There are high levels of solanine
From WIKI "Solanine is a glycoalkaloid poison found in species of the nightshade family within the genus Solanum, such as the potato (Solanum tuberosum), the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), and the eggplant (Solanum melongena). It can occur naturally in any part of the plant, including the leaves, fruit, and tubers."
I stopped eating foods from this family a long time ago. I will only take them to honor others.
But sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family. And for the common varieties found in the markets everything is edible and nutritious.
They are a vigorous grower and are invasive. As I experienced this year. But I am not complaining. The sweet potatoes are huge and there are so many of them. Finding them and getting them out of the ground I see is going to be an ongoing project and will probably stretch out until a freeze.
The leaves are wonderful. Something like spinach and the stems are long not very fibrous. They can be munched on raw as a snack. I am juicing the stems and putting the juice in containers in the freezer to be made into soups seasoned with a little garam masala. Prepared like this the taste is just like sweet potato soup made from the tuber.
What a blessing. I didn't plant them this year but two years ago I planted a couple of sprouts from a store bought purple sweet potato. They didn't do much. There were some straggly vines and a couple of small tubers. So I lost interest. But they came back all by themselves in the spring. And It's been a madhouse in the garden ever since.
Sitting on a mat with a hand trowel and carefully sifting through the dirt to find them it is like finding a treasure over and over again. They are usually standing up straight 3 or 4 inches under the top soil and extend down to almost of foot some of them. They are huge.
Stored in the dark for a few weeks to cure they become even sweeter.
I've been munching on stems and leaves and really enjoying the gift but this morning I checked out Google to make sure I wasn't eating something I would regret later...
And found this...
"Sweet potato vine poisoning in cats is caused by the ingestion of the vegetation of the sweet potato plant. Although the root of the sweet potato vine is non-toxic and even edible, the leaves and stem of the sweet potato vine contain LSD."
Just made some soup about 15 mins ago. ðððĪŠ
