The One Where I Stabbed a Sweet Potato. For Science!!!
Hands up all those who love the idea of being surrounded by green, living plants but are somewhat challenged by the whole keeping them alive thing 🙋
Now we all know the benefits of having houseplants, but I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention a few benefits, and in that case I wanted to have proven facts because then I will feel less bad about spending so much on house plants because science! It says that I should! This Healthline article mentions 7 science proven qualities about houseplants, but did raise a bit of a quandary for me.
What if I can’t keep the plants alive?
I can’t imagine seeing the dying, brown corpses of once green, living, thriving plants is going to improve my studying concentration or help my mental health all that much. As I type, there is a dead hanging vine in my bedroom (been there over 10 months now), a plant in a bowl in the kitchen which I don’t believe is technically dead yet because there is one green stalk left, and Angelica. My sweet, sweet potato plant, though she seems to be more invested in growing mold than in growing leaves.
Despite Angelica’s confusion over what exactly she should be sprouting, I have decided to try again with growing a sweet potato. It seemed simple, looks quite pretty and best of all, I wouldn’t have to remember to water it. It literally sits in water! What could be better? Plus, cheap.
All you need to do is:
- Purchase sweet potato
- Name sweet potato (mine is Gavin)
- Wash
- Get jar, make sure Gavin fits in jar
- Get another jar, because he didn’t
- The pointy end is supposed to be the end that the roots grow from. Poke four toothpicks equally spaced about 1/3 from top end to hold in the mouth of the jar. Fill the jar with water until Gavin is covered about 1/3 to 1/2
- Wait, peering at him every-day to see if a root has grown, ignoring the possibility that you’re giving him performance anxiety
And that’s it!
All that is left to do is watch and wait for my sweet potato plant to grow into a glorious mess of vines, that hopefully stays alive and improves my mental health by the mere fact of his existence. Not too much pressure to put on a sweet potato, is it?
