Ditch The Pricey House Plants: Grow Your Own Using An Old Sweet Potato

Houseplants can be a beautiful addition to any home, but they can also be expensive to purchase and finicky to maintain — unless, of course, you turn to the almighty sweet potato. Bonus points if you have an old sweet potato already sprouting vines and roots in the back of your pantry, since they're one of those kitchen scraps you can easily plant and regrow. Instead of throwing it away, you can cultivate it into a beautiful, fast-growing vine with delicate, heart-shaped leaves. Young leaves are bright green, while mature leaves develop a lovely dusky purple hue.

If you only know sweet potatoes as a delicious side dish drizzled with chili crisp or an interesting alternative to topping off your shepherd's pie, don't worry — this process is ridiculously easy. All you really need to make this work is an organic sweet potato, a container, water, and toothpicks. It's important that the sweet potato is organic, as non-organic ones are sometimes coated in chemicals to prevent sprouting. Simply push the toothpicks into the middle of the sweet potato and set it into a clear glass mason jar or vase filled with water, ensuring most of the bottom half is submerged.

The container doesn't technically have to be clear, but this allows you to watch the roots grow and monitor for things like mold growth. Set the sweet potato in a warm window that gets lots of bright, indirect sunlight, changing the water every three days or so to keep the roots healthy.

After a few weeks, when your sweet potatoes' roots are nice and strong, it'll be ready to transplant into a container. If you plan to harvest edible sweet potatoes from your new houseplant, you'll need a fairly large container — at least 10 gallons. However, if this is just for aesthetic purposes, your container can be much smaller, encouraging the sweet potato to focus on developing vines rather than growing "slips" or new sweet potatoes. You can also simply plant the entire potato in potting soil, ensuring that the roots are completely covered and any sprouting vines are in the open air.

Sweet potatoes like to be moist, but will rot in soggy soil, so choose a potting mix with sand or perlite included in it for best results, and use a container with a drainage hole in the bottom. Water it when the soil becomes dry (but not desiccated) or if the leaves on the vines appear to be wilting. Other than that, sweet potato plants are pretty hardy, provided they have access to lots of bright, warm light, as mentioned.

As your sweet potato vines grow, they'll need support from an indoor window trellis to keep them contained and ensure the leaves can access the sun. There are lots of options at your local garden centers, or you can repurpose vintage ladder or get creative with tomato cages and chicken wire to build a custom, rustic-chic support for your new low-maintenance houseplant.