the link is not what is meant by vertical growing.
the vines root as they trail along the ground and put out tubers along vines to.

That is a very strange article. Never heard of growing sweet potatoes in bins as one can with some varieties of regular potatoes. SP are very different types of plants in their growth habit and production.

But that doesn't mean it can't be done. The vines would grow but with all the leaves buried the photosynthesis would be reduced and they wouldn't produce so all you'd get would be the SP that form around the base of the plant.

But much of what is said in that article doesn't inspire credibility They call sweet potato slips "seed potatoes" (not!). They use the term vertical gardening very differently from the normal use of trellising and claim chicken wire will contain dirt, yeah right. More importantly, they say "Cut your slips in halves or quarters, making sure each section contains at least one eye." (sweet potato slips don't have eyes and you don't cut them up unless you want to kill them). You don't bury sweet potato slips as they say to do.

All in all it makes it sound like the author either doesn't know what they are talking about or at best is confusing planting potatoes with planting sweet potatoes.

Dave

The problem starts with ehow.com. it's a junk web domain that publishes a lot of crap and then manipulates Google to attract eyeballs to advertising. I blocked ehow from my Google searches a few years ago - I recommend you do too.

They took this from a potato article, and just added the word 'sweet' where necessary. Ignore it. The answer to the original question is no, you can't. In fact, when sweet potato vines touch the ground, they'll try to set roots and start producing new tubers. Those should be pulled up and prevented from rooting - they just steal energy away from the main tubers.

I hate ehow anyway. I will block it. Jon, are you saying one should plant the appropriate number of slips, then trellises vertically to prevent rooting? However if you do that, won't you get very few sweet potatoes because they won't spread?

Some good info in this linked thread, including trellised sweet potatoes a little over 1/2 way down the page.

Here is a link that might be useful: SWeetpotatoes Harvest

I have seen sweet potatoes trained up a vertical trellis in a university sweet potato breeding program. The purpose was to get the flowers up high, where they could be hand-fertilized. I doubt if is was good for the sweet potatoes' production.

Some sweet potatoes do form their roots right under the crown, for example Georgia Jet, but I still wouldn't try growing it in a container.

Just for the record, you can cut the slips up into smaller sections. The trick though is you grow them out longer than you normally would before popping them off, lay them down sideways in a bit of water or moist soil, and let the entire length of vine start to root. Then you can dice it up once each potential segment has roots.