Friday, November 14, 2008

Ornamental Sweet Potato Vine

Ornamental Sweet Potato
Ipomoea batatas 'Margarita'
Synonyms: Sweet Potato Vine, Marguerite
(ip-oh-MEE-a) (bat-TAT-as)

This plant is a good one for containers. It has been getting overused a little now and it has popping everywhere. From my experience it is an excellent container plant for Connecticut. This is the first year that I noticed it used a lot as a bedding plant. You can see from the bottom photo that it works quite well. They planted some black leaved Sweet Potato Vine as well but that didn’t get as big. The close up picture is from the big patch in the second photo.


I have really been trying some foliage shots this year and not just fall color. If you catch the light right a foliage picture can be as beautiful as a flower picture. There might be a foliage week during the winter on this site. I could probably get together enough pictures that were taken over the year to do that.

Growing Sweet Potato is generally easy although there seems to be a few insects that like it. The darker leaved ones don’t seem to take as much care to look good as the lighter ones. My guess is that there will be more and more cultivars coming out.

This is a picture of one of the Chrysanthemums we got for the Estate this year. It was really beautiful and most fragrant I have ever smelled. A really fresh flower smell not like regular mums. This is just one of the dozens of mums I took pictures of this fall. There are some extra pictures so there will be a few more mums here soon.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never seen sweet potato vine used as a bedding plant either - I love how it flows out of the bed. Must remember that!...

Signe said...

It was realy beautiful used as a bedding plant. I might try it sometimes.

Les said...

'Marguerite' is very common here and more is planted every year. I plant it every year at the bottom of our front steps with Sun Coleus and Purple Setcresea. By July you need a machete to keep it in line.

joey said...

Interesting Chris ... have never seen ornamental sweet potato vine used as a bedding plant. Overused for containers, perhaps, but often stunning. A fine photo and post.

Digital Flower Pictures said...

Well since some gardeners that I have a lot of respect for hadn't seen the Sweet Potato as a bedding plant I guess I will have to try it and see what happens.

Thanks for commenting.

i beati said...

heaven daisies all for me !!!My kitchen is daisies

Anonymous said...

I find the look of sweet potato as a ground cover very interesting-great way to get more color thru out the season-(Mn) beautiful photos