Last year I planted about 6 ornamental 'Marguerite' sweet potato vines that I acquired from a local nursery. Reading that ornamental sweet potato vines could potentially produce edible tubers piqued my interest. I planted the vines in a large Rubbermaid container and gradually mounded more soil as the vines grew. At the end of the season, I had completely forgotten about the ornamental sweet potatoes. The vines had all withered up and I was more concerned with harvesting the fruits and veggies in the main garden. Just before Thanksgiving, we were poking around the garden and upended the sweet potato bin. Inside were 5 or 6 very large, red-skinned tubers (about 1 per plant), in addition to several rather skinny, long ones. The flesh was a pale yellow. We washed the tubers and my step-father cooked them up like a regular sweet potato with butter and brown sugar, and to my palette was the best sweet potato I've ever tasted. I was so surprised! The flesh was somewhat firmer than regular sweet potatoes, and the flavor was definitely different. I will be planting more of these this season. It may be helpful to note that I checked the bin earlier in the season to see if there were any tubers starting, and I saw none. I dug up one complete vine and was disappointed. I replanted the vine and sometime after that the tubers must have begun growing. I do not remember what month I did this preliminary tuber check, but it was quite hot outside.

Well, I chunked up my purple taters, peeled them, boiled them, and then I put them in the blender. I was trying to mush them enough so I could make a pie filling. However, those things kept getting thicker and thicker, and so I added some nice fat free half and half....and instead of sugar, I put in a cup of Splenda. And the color is the most gorgeous lavender. I've done no further cooking, but it takes a big spoon to dip this out of the blender container. I think about 48 ounce size too. And my parrots love it, the dogs love it, and I love it. I mean, what is not to like about this smooth concoction, which tastes and has the texture of a pudding. I did not add any vanilla, but I suppose I could have but I wanted to see the taste of the natural sweet potato. Also, I could have left out the Splenda and had a veggie smoothie. I've downloaded a book on my Kindle which is a book about making green smoothies, out of raw foods. The blessed thing about such food, so many of the green foods are "free" foods that do not count against your diet if you are diabetic. That is one reason I've begun eating more dill pickles, sauerkraut, jalapenos, mustard on any sandwich, and then the SaraLee 10 carb whole wheat sliced bread....sometimes just one slice for an open faced sandwich. But the green smoothies are espousing the raw food diet, going beyond vegan to raw, and eliminating cooked foods of any kind. You can go part way with this sort of diet, which is what I would do, but I will give it a go because by eating raw greens, I've already lost 8 pounds. Hard to take it off, but great when it happens.

I have a milkweed vine that I believe is called a white vine (Sarcostemma clausum). It is rampant in my garden now. I have never seen a monarch use it for eggs. I do have a bunch of monarchs around and I don't know what they are using for larval food, since I have many tropical milkweed plants growing in different places. When I break off a piece of this vine the white milkweed comes out. I wonder if this is the same with the other vines that you guys are discussing? I live in Central Florida zone 9B. I think the white vine has come up from southern Florida and is doing well here because of the very mild weather we have had the past four or five years. Casara, it would be helpful to know where you live.

I find sweet potatoes "taste good" as little as 1 week after harvest but taste is strictly subjective and depends in great part on how one fixes them. So come Thanksgiving how would you be serving them? Straight baked like a russet with nothing but butter - then you'd want them really well cured, say six weeks. But if you are serving one of the more common Thanksgiving recipes - smothered in brown sugar, or marshmallows, or maple syrup, a whipped souffle with pecans, etc. then it really wouldn't make a lot of difference how long they cured. Or you can skip the whole problem and just harvest them whenever you wish and cure them for as long as you wish and get store-bought ones that are already cured for Thanksgiving. My point is you are creating a problem for yourself where none need exist by setting a fixed deadline. That approach seldom works whether one is talking about growing flowers for a wedding date and hoping they bloom on time, planting a watermelon to guarantee it will be perfectly ripe for the 4th of July picnic, or having the perfect sweet potato for Thanksgiving. There are too many variables involved to insure success. Dave