Seriously, at a friend’s suggestion, I planted some of these in an open bed, to drape over the side of a stone wall, alongside a wide selection of other annuals, and within a month, you couldn’t even SEE the other plants I’d put in there, as they were getting smothered by the sweet potato vines. I had to cut them back *severely* three or four times over the course of the summer, which in Massachusetts is really just June through the first week in September, i.e. not that long a stretch of time, for a plant to cycle so many times through such out-of-control growth.

In the fall, when I was cleaning out my flowerbeds, and had to cart away several wheelbarrowfuls of sweet potato vines, I found actual potatoes buried in my flowerbed. And I’m not talking about little things, I’m talking about massive ones, potatoes as big as three fists together! I asked my friend whose bright idea it was to plant them, if they were edible, but she wasn’t sure, so I didn’t take the chance. (Turns out they are, but they still scare me…)

It was at that point that I vowed never to put these plants in an open bed ever again, because they get too unmanageable with all that space and soil available to them. If I use them at all, it’s just in container gardening for a contrast color. But even there, they start creeping down and crawling across my patio… heyyyy, what’s that I feel climbing up my ankle? … wait… wait… no, it can’t be… nooooooOOOOOOOOO AHHHHGGGHHHHhh!!!