Well I told you I thought I had some cypress vine seeds. Just after I posted I went and looked two or three more places again and returned to where I knew they should be and found them this time. lol
So just ignore that part of my question please. However if anyone knows where to get the sweet potato plants or info on them please let me know. These are not the plants which make sweet potatoes...as far as I know they are ornamental only.
Thanks again.
(oh and I might add...I am blonde...duh...also sort of old...ugh)hahaha
G. M.

Hi G.M.!

Sounds like Murray County is getting the scarey weather tonight!

There are at least nine named ornamental sweet potatoes that I can think of: Blackie, Lady Fingers, Marguerite, Ace of Spades, Pink Frost, Ivory Jewel, Sweet Caroline Bronze, Terrace Lime, and Sweet Caroline Yellow and Green. The chartreuse one is Marguerite.

Of these, I have grown Blackie, Marguerite, Ace of Spades, Pink Frost, and Lady Fingers.

These plants are Ipomoea batatas, which means they are actually relatives of the morning glory, moonflower and cypress vine.

You can usually find some of them at places like Lowe's and Wal-Mart beginning in mid-April. The ones I see most often in local stores are Blackie, Marguerite and Pink Frost. They are grown from tubers and I don't bother trying to overwinter my tubers. I overwintered them for a few years, but it was just one more thing to keep up with all winter long!

They are fast growers and are easy to root from cuttings. You can find them in 4" pots or you can buy huge ones in hanging baskets. They like lots of water, especially when grown in containers which limit their root growth.

They are beautiful and I love to use them in large pots mixed with tropicals on my screened-in back porch and on my barn porch.

These are easy. They practically grow themselves and are not the least bit intimidated by our sunshine, heat or the occasional days when the thermometer soars to 110 or 112 degrees in August. Just give them water. They like a little plant food every now and then, but will do OK without it, they just won't grow quite as large. I've never had any sort of pest problems with them either.

Dawn

Hi Dawn
Well there you are again...impressing me with all that knowledge...it is the Marguerite I am sure that my friend had last summer...she also had one which best I can recall had some burgundy or purple in the leaves...it was pretty also but I liked the green best.
Thanks for all the info on them I do want to find some of them. My friend who had them last summer was a camp host at the lake and those plants just went right through all that horrible heat we had just fine. I know I could get some from her but I won't see her until around Memorial day and I want to get them started sooner. She lives about a 100 miles from here or I would just go see her. She told me to get some last fall and I didn't do it. I wish now I had done so...but actually now I know why I didn't. My niece was life flighted to Lawton hospital and a few weeks later passed away and we left the lake suddenly as soon as we learned of her accident and stayed over there for several weeks.
Have you ever grown the cypress vine? It is amazing...I grew it on an arched trellis one summer and it was beautiful but one day we got strong winds and that heavy vine caused such wind resistence that the entire arch blew over and broke....now I know it takes a strong support for that much of it....hahaha. At least here...we get LOTS of wind where we live.
I will check around and see where I can find some of it...does it multiply then like other root or bulb type plants? And are they best grown in containers? Of course I will more than likely do so anyway...it is just that they might look really pretty in a corner of one or two of my flower beds.
Thanks again Dawn.
Oh and yes the storms looked to be moving north of us up near Davis or so and heading east. Our weather radio went off once and I got several emergency weather emails.
Be safe tonight.
G. M.

Hi G.M.,

Our weather radio went off once too. Then I came upstairs to the computer and could hear the Carter County Emergency Operations Center (on our fire scanner) tracking the storms as they crossed into Murray County. Sounded dicey for a while, but it has quieted down now.

I'm sorry to hear that you lost your niece last summer. That must have been very difficult.

I grow cypress vine every year whether I plant it or not. I planted it 8 or 9 years ago and now it just pops up here and there. Some years it climbs the cornstalks, other years the fence, or it weaves itself through and around and in and out of the pumpkin vines. You have to admire a plant that is able to survive like that. :)

The sweet potato vine grows just as well in the ground as long as it is well-watered. If you drive through the big apartment complexes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex during the summer months, you will see that every single one of them has plantings of Marquerite and Blackie sweet potato vines near the entrances to the complexes. Every single one. It is like having that vine is part of the building code. I guess they like it because it grows fast, is pest-free, and looks good too.

Dawn

They used to grow tons of it in the huge concrete planters downtown in OKC at the Bank of Oklahoma building. Since then.....

THEY HAVE GONE NATIVE! Can you believe it? I was so proud of them. They have all kinds of native plants in those big ole planters now! Whoo-hoo!

Susan