Sweet Potatoes: Florida Summer Garden Heroes
When most people think of sweet potatoes, they picture what grows beneath the soil. That was certainly my focus when we first started growing them. These days, though, I've come to appreciate them for so much more.
After pulling my cooler-season greens from the GreenStalk, the first thing I wanted to try was sweet potato vines. They had already impressed me growing in the ground last year, so while I waited for some of my new summer greens to get established, I clipped a few healthy vines that my husband had started in the garden and planted them in several GreenStalk pockets, hoping they’d do well there too.
They took off almost immediately.
In fact, they were some of the easiest and fastest plants I've ever gotten established. Within a short time, the vines were growing happily alongside everything else, reinforcing what I'd already begun to suspect: sweet potatoes are perfectly suited to Florida summers.
Sweet potato vines were the first thing I planted after clearing out my cooler-season greens, and they quickly became some of the easiest plants I've ever grown in my GreenStalk.
That wasn't entirely surprising, though. The vines growing in the ground had already convinced me that sweet potatoes are some of the hardest-working plants in our summer garden. Once they get going, they quickly spread into a lush carpet of heart-shaped leaves that seems to thrive despite the heat that leaves so many other vegetables struggling.
One of the things I appreciate most about sweet potatoes is that they offer more than one harvest. Of course, we grow them for the potatoes themselves, but the young leaves are edible too. Last year we added fresh leaves to salads and blended some into smoothies, giving us another way to enjoy the plant long before it was time to dig the potatoes.
Sweet potato vines quickly take over, creating a lush carpet of leaves that thrives through Florida's summer heat.
If you've never eaten sweet potato leaves, you're not alone. I hadn't either until we started growing them. The young leaves have a mild flavor and can be enjoyed fresh or cooked like many other leafy greens. Having a plant that produces both edible roots and edible greens has completely changed the way I think about sweet potatoes.
They're also remarkably forgiving. In my experience, the vines establish easily, tolerate Florida's summer heat with very little fuss, and ask for much less attention than many of the greens I try to grow during this time of year. That combination of resilience, productivity, and versatility has earned them a permanent place in our garden.
For me, sweet potatoes have truly become Florida summer garden heroes. What started as a crop for the harvest beneath the soil has become one of my favorite summer greens as well, and every season gives me another reason to appreciate just how much this one plant has to offer.
