The Low-Maintenance Flower And Plant Combo You'll Want In Your Container Garden

If you're looking for a new potted plant to place in your container garden, but haven't been finding something quite as eye-catching as you'd hoped, it may be time to look at creating a container with two different plants in it. This is a method known as companion planting. Commonly used in reference to produce, companion plants impact your garden in positive ways by helping to deter certain insects, enhancing soil health, and maximizing space. It can also be a great way to make a stunning plant display. For example, if you're looking for an eye-catcher, petunias and sweet potato vines may be just the combination you're wanting outside your home. 

Petunias (Petunia spp.) and sweet potato vines (Ipomoea batatas) make excellent companion plants, as both are relatively easy to care for. They also add beauty to your yard, and look absolutely stunning together. Because they have similar requirements in terms of sun, water, hardiness zone, and fertilizer, they are plants you can grow together without much effort. Petunias will serve as a welcome burst of color, while the sweet potato vine grows faster and bigger, filling out any empty space. 

Both plants have a lot of variety in terms of shape and color. Sweet potato vine can often be found in a bright lime green, but also comes in a variety of deep burgundies, dark greens, and purples. The leaves can be wide and spade-shaped or more narrow and pointed like stars. Petunia flowers come in almost any color, but most commonly you'll see pinks, purples, whites, reds, and yellows. Pick a contrasting flower to your sweet potato vine and you'll be sure to have an eye-catching potted plant perfect for any part of your yard. 

Both sweet potato vines and petunias are technically perennials, but are regularly grown as annuals across most of the U.S., so planting them together in a pot makes it easy to remove and replace them at the end of the growing season. Petunias are one of the plants you'll want to consider starting the seeds indoors before spring officially begins. Planting the petunias before your sweet potato vine is usually best, as sweet potato vine needs warm temperatures to thrive. Sweet potato vine also tends to spread pretty rapidly if given room, so planting them last and keeping them in a pot will prevent them from taking too much real estate. 

Petunias have benefits aside from their beautiful appearance and looks. These flowers are a plant that can make your home garden repel ticks and fleas. Having petunias nearby may also encourage insects to pollinate your sweet potato blooms. While the sweet potato vine used for decorative purposes and those grown in gardens for culinary use are the same species, they are different cultivars. Your ornamental vine may grow tubers if given enough space. These are said to be very bitter to eat, but hey can be replanted for more sweet potato vines.

If you want to grow petunias and sweet potatoes together but you feel like you need a little more diversity than just these two species, they'll do great with several other plants as well. For example, hybrids of salvias (also known as sages) come in a variety of different leaf and flower colors, and attract pollinators. Coleus is another foliage-based plant that works well with both petunias and sweet potato vines. Certain grasses, herbs, and several other flowers also work well with this mix.