Good question! I've never had a groundhog eat anything and I am not sure I have ever seen one, except in the movie.
The vine will most likely be capable of producing more leaves which will be promising for sweet potatoes.
Just keep watering the plants like you normally do and see what happens.
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
I second Anne's response. Except I have seen a groundhog. Kinda cute they are, but keep 'em away from my backyard groceries!
Sweet potatoes tend to be vigorous where I live, and I've actually had several forgotten ones overwinter and come back. So I'm hopeful your vines will recover well.
Yes, they can absolutely regrow after the leaves have been eaten, whether by critters or by you. If it is excessive, as in all the leaves or if it is repetitive the final yield will suffer of course.
I think their resilience in that regard is because sweet potatoes are actually storage roots. So long as they are well established they can rapidly recover from such damage as well as weather droughts and insects but each time they have to call on their stored water and nutrients it degrades the root. From my experience that degradation is in regard to size rather than quality.
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Yeah, so, uh, I eat the leaves of my sweet potatoes all the time and they do just fine, so I think you're good!!
(I trellis mine specifically to eat the leaves. Every so often I harvest unintentional sweet potatoes, but we are after the leaves. Once they get going, it seems like sweet potatoes are pretty resilient.)
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