Plants' growth are told to divide two phases, nutritional growth and reproductive growth. In the former phase, a plant grows individually at its trunk, vine or leaves. In most cases, the latter phase follows it. It leaves crops or fruits.
The former growth is accelerated with meteological factors and low carbon/nitrogen ratio in the soil. High nitrogen from too much fertilizer is often a cause of this phenomenon.
In the excessive vine growth with the sweet potatoes, the latter, that is, too much fertilizer won't be the cause. Regardless of the remnant amounts of fertilizer, it has occurred in the same manner at different fields. Another evidence that the weather, most likelily the hot spell in the past spring/summer, may be the fact some of Marie Gold planted at different places of the garden, of course, without any fertilizer has shown the same excessive growth of the trunk/leaves. They have bloomed very few flowers. The typical case is shown in the following photo. The two trunks have grown large in unusual way while some flowers are out in the other few plants. I have never seen this overgrowth in the past.
This is only a hypothesis that global warming is influencing our tiny garden/farm. But we should be careful about such a thing. We are the crops brought by the reproductive growth of the crops. If those crops grow only in the nutritional growth but not in the reproductive growth, it may cause famine.
Last night, I have cooked the overgrown vine of sweet potatoes with chicken as this photo shows. My wife at first prejudiced that it could have been like a menu people used to cook in the war time without much food. But she was pretty happy at this dish when it was cooked. This recipe was published by a lady in Shikoku, my wife's birth place, as an old one from ancestors.
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