How to Overwinter Ornamental Sweet Potatoes

Ornamental sweet potato vines grow into cascades of colorful foliage in just a few months and are the perfect way to add a shot of color to containers and garden beds. Most people buy them in spring and ditch the plants in fall, but these pretty chartreuse or deep purple plants can live for more than one year if you take just a bit of time to care for them correctly. Here’s how to get at least two seasons of color from a single ornamental sweet potato plant.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Purchase ornamental sweet potato plants from a nursery in spring and plant them in containers or in the garden. Over the summer the plants' roots will develop tubers that you can save over the winter and use next season. Before the first frost, tip container-grown sweet potato vines onto a tarp. Sort out the tubers and remove them from the vines. If the plants are growing in a bed, use a garden fork to gently lift them out of the soil, taking care not to puncture the tubers. Choose several large, undamaged tubers for storage.
2. Allow the tubers to air-dry in a shaded, sheltered area for a few hours. Then brush off excess soil and store the tubers in a box or mesh bag between layers of sawdust. Place the box/bag in a dark, cool (45 to 50 degrees F), well-ventilated place, such as an unheated basement.
3. Examine the tubers once a month and throw out any potatoes with soft, rotten or moldy spots. If the tubers start to shrivel up, sprinkle them lightly with water.
4. In spring, take the tubers out of storage eight weeks before your last frost date. Fill gallon-sized plastic containers with a pre-moistened soilless mix to within 3 inches of the rim. Place a potato in each pot and cover with 1 inch of soilless mix. Shoots should develop in one to two weeks. You can transplant the entire tuber and the growing vine into the garden after the last frost date.