So, after a short hiatus, I’m back to updating the blog! unfortunately the intensity of the residency program and the corona virus caught me (and the rest of the world) by surprise, so it took me some time to get back to all my hobbies and find some time to update the site.
Today I’d like to share with you a really great idea for decorating windowsills that seem bland or need an extra touch of greenery without investing a lot of money or maintenance.
Remember my previous post about Making Self-Watering Herb Jars From Cuttings? I decided to use some of the leftover plastic planting baskets I bought from AliExpress to try and cultivate sweet potatoes, after reading online that they grow well in water and develop beautiful green edible leaves.
I took the same glass container and plastic planting baskets from the previous post, filled the water to the top of the jar and inserted a brown and purple sweet potato at the top. You could probably do the same without a planting basket using toothpicks to steady the potatoes, with about 1/3 of the potato submerged in water.
Within a couple of days, the potatoes start developing white roots, and within a couple of weeks lovely green leaves appear on the top. I let one of the potatoes grow wild around our windows and it looks lovely! If you’d like, you can try cutting one the vines and letting it grow on its own in water, thus eliminating the need to keep an entire potato on the windowsill.
Apparently if you take the sprouts and plant them, you can grow new potatoes with 14 weeks. Unfortunately, we don’t have the space on our balcony but it definitely sound exciting. I also read that the leaves are edible- haven’t tried eating them yet so I’ll keep you posted.
Have you tried growing your own? How about other veggies? Let me know how it went.