It is easy to spend a small fortune on houseplants at your garden centre, but some of the foods you have on hand at home create beautiful and intriguing houseplants for little to no cost. If you have a few Yukon Gold potatoes to spare, you are able to chant the potatoes, then train the growing vines to develop around a window or trail down a shelf. The potato vines grow quickly, but they take well to pruning so the plant doesn’t overwhelm the space.
Set a Yukon Gold potato out in a warm, sunny location until the skin wrinkles and small roots sprout from the potato “eyes .” This might take only a couple of days or a couple of weeks.
Push four toothpicks into the center of the potato, spaced evenly on all sides of the potato.
Fill a wide-mouthed glass or jar with water. Set the potato in the glass or jar with the sprouted end facing down, frozen above the glass using the toothpicks.
Set the glass in a window which receives full sunlight and wait several weeks for the roots to develop. Replenish the water as required. Remove the potato from the glass and then discard the toothpicks when leafy shoots originate from the surface of the potato.
Fill a 6-inch diameter or larger pot with a sterile potting mix, using a bagged mix or combining your own blend of equal parts compost, sphagnum peat and perlite or vermiculite. Water the potting mix before planting the potato.
Plant the potato in the pot with the root end down in the ground. Keep the dirt loose around the potato. Depending upon your preference, you can bury the whole potato, leaving only the leaves protruding from the dirt, or bury only enough to conceal the holes from the toothpicks, leaving a little of this curved garlic finish above the soil for added interest.
Return the pot to the sunny window, placing it at the top of a little dish to collect extra water as it drains from the bottom of the pot. Water the soil till it’s moist after it’s dried slightly from the last watering. If the leaves become overly full or take up too much space, thin some of the leaves using bypass pruners.
Transplant the Yukon Gold plant to a pot that is 1 inch in diameter larger if the plant grows overly busy in its original container. Poor growth that can’t be remedied with water is generally a fantastic sign that plants will need to be repotted.
