I come from the school of gardening that prizes developing a taste for plants that want to grow without mollycoddling, rather than struggling to grow plants where they don’t want to be, just because I like the taste. Silverbeet and lettuce, for example, are subject to all manner of bugs and diseases, whereas nutritious sweet potato leaves (which I first encountered in PNG and the Solomon Islands) are available all year round and largely impervious.
Sweet potato leaves are edible green leaves from the sweet potato plant. They are rich in vitamins A, C, and K, along with essential minerals like calcium and iron. These leaves have a slightly bitter taste and a texture similar to spinach. They can be used in stir-fries, soups, salads, and other dishes.
Nutritionally, sweet potato leaves offer significant benefits while containing very few calories. One cup of cooked chopped leaves weighs around 64g and contains about 22 calories / 90 kilojoules. Halve that for a cup of raw leaves. They are considered high oxalate, so stay away if you have kidney stones — but, for perspective, that is 58mg oxalate per 100g of leaves compared to spinach with 490mg per 100g.
Rats will eat the tubers — the sweet potato itself — but the only thing around where I live that I’ve seen stop the leaves is brush turkeys, which will destroy the whole patch once they discover it. So if you have turkeys as neighbours you need a chicken wire cage around the bed, and should clip off the leaves as the vines climb past the chicken wire and try to spread all around.
There are lots of recipes online of course, but we like stir-fry with garlic and soy sauce. One of these days I’m looking forward to trying some of the recipes with spicy coconut milk or cream from The Congo, as well as all over SE Asia.