Sweet Potato

Sweet Potato is a special-edition premium plant that appeared with the 3.0.1 update of Plants vs. Zombies 2. It can attract zombies from adjacent tiles covering the 1x3 (vertical) area in front of the tile where it was planted in lane. Furthermore, it is also a defensive plant, possessing a toughness scale equivalent that of a Wall-nut. Like Ghost Pepper, Homing Thistle, Fire Peashooter, and Dandelion, it costs 109 gems to purchase it. It was removed from the store on December 3, 2014.

Sweet Potato and other special-edition plants came back in the Luck O' The Zombie event. The plants were available for purchase from March 11, 2015 until March 24, 2015. It once again reappeared in the stores as of July 7, 2015 along with the new Piñata Parties advertising the availability of all the special-edition plants for a limited time. Its cost was reduced to 75 gems during the Summer Nights special event.

It returned on November 19, 2015 in a Fall Food Fight Piñata Party, and returned to the shop for 109 gems.

Almanac entry
TOUGHNESS: High RECHARGE: Sluggish

Sweet Potatoes attract zombies from other lanes when they are close by.

Sweet Potato really is as sweet as she looks. Her favorite animal is the unicorn. Her favorite color is (and this is a direct quote) "all the colors in the rainbow." When she writes the letter "i", she draws a little heart where the dot belongs. Frankly, if it were anyone else, this amount of syrup would be sickening. But on her, well, it just seems right.

Plant Food effect
When given Plant Food, Sweet Potato fully heals itself and attracts all zombies in a 4x3 area. Love hearts will radiate off its body as it hops up and down as an expression of joy and excitement. In the Chinese version, the plant will just enter an invulnerable state for a period of time, devoid of healing capabilities.

Costumed
Sweet Potato fully heals itself along with its regular effect.

Strategies
Sweet Potato allows the player to attract zombies into well-guarded lanes while setting safe zones for sun production and other supporting plants. It is especially useful for setting choke points and allow area of effect plants such as Banana Launcher, Spikerock and Lava Guava to maximize their damage potential. Its weaknesses however are high cost and recharge rate, and that it is usually not tough enough for taking the pressure from multiple lanes. Because of this, Sweet Potato needs to be used with great care.

There are two main ways of setting up Sweet Potatoes: First, third and fifth lane, or second and fourth lane. The second method is more cost efficient, but the Sweet Potatoes will also take more pressure and require replacement faster. The player can also take advantage of the terrain modifiers in Pirate Seas and Frostbite Caves to set up Sweet Potato more efficiently - a smart setup in certain Frostbite Caves level can funnel virtually all threats to a single lane.

Another way to use Sweet Potato is to treat it as a supporting plant, while using other defensive plants such as Wall-nut and Tall-nut to defend it. Chard Guard works particularly well with Sweet Potato - since it relies on its pushing ability rather than bulk to defend, it can deal with large groups of enemies from multiple lanes much more easily compared to other defensive plants. However, these defensive plants may recharge too slowly, in which time the zombies may have already eaten through the Sweet Potato. Therefore, Primal Wall-nut may be most helpful with her.

Sweet Potato, together with Primal Peashooter, can be a very powerful combination in Pirate Seas if planned well. The trick is to place Sweet Potato on plankless lanes to attract zombies, Primal Peashooter's role here is to be placed behind Sweet Potato to immediately knock off zombies that get attracted. But beware for not all zombies can be attracted by Sweet Potato, and Primal Peashooter's knockback does not always happen. Also, certain zombies cannot be drowned as it walks on water due to a glitch. Though this strategy can be extremely useful, it is not recommended to be used standalone, bringing instants/Blover or Hurrikale for Seagull Zombies can improve the capability of this strategy.

Sweet Potato can also be used with Escape Root for devastating results. Plant Escape Root behind Sweet Potato; the latter will attract zombies. When all of them are clustered, swap Escape Root with Sweet Potato to take out the group of zombies, or to severely harm Gargantuars. A good strategy is to use Sweet Potato in conjunction with Phat Beet, due to its lack of range and affinity to large zombie density in adjacent lanes.

When using Sweet Potato, look out for zombies such as Mecha-Football Zombie, Gargantuar, Explorer Zombie and other zombies with the ability to move or instantly destroy plants.

Trivia

 * Jetpack Zombie, Disco Jetpack Zombie, Zombie Bull, Zombie King, Imp Cannon, Fisherman Zombie, and Barrel Roller Zombie with its barrel cannot be attracted by Sweet Potato.
 * The brown area on its body appears to be the brown peel of the real life sweet potato.
 * Sweet Potato is actually only distantly related to the potato family. In New Zealand it is called Kūmara which is the sister plant to the Potato. Furthermore, Sweet Potato has a heart shaped leaf on their primary plant, and hearts come off the Sweet Potato when using Plant Food.
 * Sweet Potato can make a Shield Zombie switch lanes with its shield activated, but it will detach from its shield and the shield will not be able to switch lanes.
 * In any situation where a zombie would repeatedly go back and forth between lanes due to more than one Sweet Potato trying to attract a zombie, the zombie will ignore Sweet Potatoes altogether. It will only be attracted to a Sweet Potato once when the other(s) is or are gone.
 * Sweet Potatoes that use their Plant Food ability have higher priority and therefore, the zombies will ignore the previously said statement and reach to the one which was fed with Plant Food only if the zombie is in its range.
 * If a zombie is at the back or at the bottom of Sweet Potato while fed with Plant Food, it will attract the zombie behind and the eating animation will also be backwards, the zombie facing the right side of the lawn.
 * If the zombie is a Gargantuar that has not yet thrown his Imp and his health goes below half and he is not currently attacking the Sweet Potato, he will throw the Imp backwards to the 3rd column (much like a hypnotized Gargantuar). The Imp will then walk to the right and eat Plants like a Prospector Zombie as he was spawned backwards and was never actually affected by the Sweet Potato.
 * There is a glitch after feeding it with Plant Food while planted on a Lily Pad on water: any zombies that move backwards to eat the Sweet Potato will actually consume the Lily Pad, losing the Sweet Potato in the process.
 * If the player places a Sweet Potato behind an Infi-nut's barrier, then feeds it with Plant Food, zombies will pass through the barrier.
 * Zombies pushed back by Fume-shroom and Hurrikale, or a pull from Chomper's Plant Food ability can get attracted by Sweet Potato.
 * If a zombie is attracted by Sweet Potato onto an ice floe, the ice floe will take no effect while the zombie is on that tile.
 * According to the credits, Sweet Potato is voiced by Becky Allen.
 * Its costume may be a reference to Sailor Moon.
 * Sweet Potato and Hypno-shroom are the only plants in the Chinese version not to have a different Plant Food effect when costumed.
 * According to the texture file of the plant, there was planned, but never used, a third degrade of the Sweet Potato, making it lose its left side clothing.