Sure. You don't even have to have dirt if the leaves are all you want. Kids have grown a sweet potato plant suspended in a jar of water for generations. ;)

Dave

Well I want an abundance of leaves for eating :)

have never heard of eating sweet tater leaves... what do you do with them?

I've heard of eating the leaves. But I don't know how they are prepared. Sure would like to know!

George

LOL Sweet Potato leaves are commonly eaten as a Chinese vegetable. Just take the leaves, remove any tough stalks and saute them. Very delicious.

In Taiwan, after WWII it was a primary source of food.

can I just plant a few in a garden box without worrying about depth?

Ok if you want lots then I would still root them first in water and then plant in the container. Last year when growing slips for planting I did some in water and some in about 4" of potting mix. The ones I rooted in water for slip produced slips much more quickly. I used long skinny potatoes - 1/2 in and 1/2 out of the water and supported on the rim of the water container by toothpicks - just like we did as kids.

The soil ones I buried 1/2 way with several eyes up and kept the soil moist.

But either way will work. ;)

Dave

Thanks Dave! I'll give that a try. I'm assuming that if I want lots of leaves than I should also feed more nitrogen?

I can remember as a child in NYC my mother let me stick toothpicks in a sweet potato and set it in a glass on the only windowsill in our apartment that ever got any sunlight. WOW! Vines galore, all over the bookcases, and starting for the couch... When both mother and I started having nightmares about being strangled by squash vines we finally had to pull it down.

Now that I know that the leaves are also edible I'm SO going to plant some sweet taters this year! I'm not sure that I've gotten my soil (which started out as just about 100% sand 5 years ago) to the point where I can actually get potatoes, but given my childhood experience about 60 years ago I absolutely KNOW that I can get leaves!

You can also buy a bunch of fresh SP leaves from Asian market, root them/ plant them instead of tubers/slin.

I am going to try it myself, just for the leaves, for the first time.
But have heard that they are creeping vines.But that shouldn't be a probem; you just prune them and eat them.

I just cooked the last of my harvest of sweets from last season. I hope I have a good harvest this year...

In the Asian Vegetable forum, I asked for someone to please explain camote leaves-- aka sweet potato leaves. They did explain them. Some varieties evidently taste better than others. They recommended the ones from the Asian store, sold as shoots, if available. They vetoed the decorative sweet potato vines that people have been growing. Those are the correct kind of sweet potato, but evidently they taste bad. Most people seem to eat the leaves cooked. Can't decide if anyone actually uses them raw in salad.

About the squash vine nightmare-- talks about squash leaves and tips (ayote, maybe pumpkin)-- this is squash? leaves. Trying to find out about that now.

The more hot weather summer greens the better. Especially raw salad leaves!

No I wouldn't eat decorative sweet potato vines LOL. Not even sure if that's safe.