Combining houseplants and the garden. Let's see YOUR setup!

I want to contribute to the new houseplants forum, but I don't have as many houseplants as I used to. I'll build back up, but here's my contribution for now. It'll be kinda lame with just what I'm posting, so if anyone else is doing anything on topic, please post here. (With pictures!)

I last bought sweet potato starts two or three years ago. We didn't use all of that year's harvest until at least spring, when I noticed shoots growing on a few of the tubers. I've kept going like that ever since. Last winter we were going to run out, so I started a few shoots as a houseplant. I've never been able to keep 'em alive as a houseplant, I never could seem to get the water right. They either would dry up and die, or the soil would stay wet too long and kill them. So this time, I potted them with an easier (for me) plant to use up the extra water. They survived just fine potted with Wandering Jew. (No picture of that. Sorry.)

Now I'm trying to get ready for garden season and it's almost time to plant sweet potatoes. So I cut the vines off my plant, broke 'em up for slips, and put 'em in some rock wool cubes to root. Made 'em a place in the window in the only cat free room in the house. Fingers crossed.

If you're gardening part time house plants, or keeping garden plants in the house, post it here.

Thank you for your post. Well done. What variety of sweet potatoes are in the photo?

I tend to cheat and buy bundles of sweet potato slips from the market, then stand them in a really cute vintage jug that I bought (cheap because it had a convenient chip that made it not very hygienic to drink out of) for a week or so until they've rooted.  I change the water every day or two and I think they look really pretty!



If they are freshy cut, it takes about a week to get them looking like this...

They do look pretty in the pitcher. And look at those fabulous roots!

Angela Wilcox wrote:What variety of sweet potatoes are in the photo?

I'm pretty sure they're Beauregard. That and Georgia Jett are probably the easiest to get around here.

I grew some last year.
Placed the sweet potatoe in a dish pan of potting soil.
A  plastic pickle jar with a 1/ 8" hole in the lid was inverted into the the dishpan to provide water.
I fed some of the copious foliage to our rabbit and planted the slips in a barrel in the spring.
That was at my sister's place.
She just harvested the slips, but I imagine a dedicated bed would give a food crop of tubers.

This year I had two chayote squash seeds start growing inside their fruit, as they are prone to do.
My wife finally kicked them outside because the tendrils kept grabbing her.
I planted them outside the fence over at my yarden.
I'm hoping the Guatemalan neighbors will want some.

I have lots of veggie starts going inside now. I’ve also grown micro tomatoes in winter. I tried to grow cucumbers over the winter but my soil became infested with fungal gnats, and then the leaves and vines were overtaken by aphids. Prior to that, I had beautiful cucumber plants and got a couple of cucumbers off of them.

In the winter, I usually would start a few flower seeds indoors to watch them growing up when it's still too early for major seed starting.  Marigolds are one of my favorites since the plants are compact and fast growing. By early spring, they are already blooming and brightening up the room. Moreover, the cuttings are easy to root so when it's finally warm enough, I have multiple plants ready to go in the ground.

Not as much change as I'd hoped for, but I've spotted the little root "bumps" and a few actual roots.







I also got to the Asian Market and picked up some of each sweet potato variety they had. (In produce. They don't carry garden stuff.) Did a little looking around on permies and found a method(s) some folks have been using for the same task. They're horizontal, about 25% - 30% percent covered in sand, on a heat mat.



Here's pictures of my other houseplants. Sorry for the weird angles, had to keep most of the clutter out of the shots. (What else could I do? Clean up?) The white pot, farthest away, is Pothos and Spider Plant. The light green pot in the same picture is Wandering Jew and the roots of the Sweet Potatoes. (There's one Sweet Potato leaf left, not sure you can make it out, backlit like this.) The dark green pot in the other picture is Aloe and Avocado.

T Melville wrote:Not as much change as I'd hoped for, but I've spotted the little root "bumps" and a few actual roots.







I also got to the Asian Market and picked up some of each sweet potato variety they had. (In produce. They don't carry garden stuff.) Did a little looking around on permies and found a method(s) some folks have been using for the same task. They're horizontal, about 25% - 30% percent covered in sand, on a heat mat.



Here's pictures of my other houseplants. Sorry for the weird angles, had to keep most of the clutter out of the shots. (What else could I do? Clean up?) The white pot, farthest away, is Pothos and Spider Plant. The light green pot in the same picture is Wandering Jew and the roots of the Sweet Potatoes. (There's one Sweet Potato leaf left, not sure you can make it out, backlit like this.) The dark green pot in the other picture is Aloe and Avocado.

Beautiful plants, thanks for sharing.

May Lotito wrote:In the winter, I usually would start a few flower seeds indoors to watch them growing up when it's still too early for major seed starting.  Marigolds are one of my favorites since the plants are compact and fast growing. By early spring, they are already blooming and brightening up the room. Moreover, the cuttings are easy to root so when it's finally warm enough, I have multiple plants ready to go in the ground.

May Lotito it's nice to meet you, those Marigolds flowers are beautiful, thanks for sharing.

Not much (visible) change in the cuttings. A few have produced new tips and grown maybe ¼". (6 or 7mm?) I've stopped pulling them out of the cubes because if they're rooting like I hope, I don't want to break them off.

The Asian market tubers, though, are a different story. Two of them have obvious but tiny vines developing. A few others have bumps that I hope indicate the same thing, but could be sand grains or abrasians. I'm especially excited for the one on the right. I think it's purple skin/ purple flesh, the kind called ube.

My mistake: I was right about the colors, but wrong about ube. Ube is not a sweet potato, but a true yam. A whole other species.

Samuel Carvajal wrote:

May Lotito it's nice to meet you, those Marigolds flowers are beautiful, thanks for sharing.

Hi Samuel, nice to meet you too. The marigold variety is called Spanish brocade. Nasturtium is an other beautiful plant that can be easily propagated from stem cuttings.

I've been tweaking my setup. Limiting factor: three cats have full run of the house, aside from this room. I have two North windows and two West. For the the north, the plants need some supplemental light. Think I've got it covered.

All the Lumens!

Here it is with the privacy "curtains" closed.



The whole shelf has only been in place less than a week. The sweet potatoes, especially, were looking sad, but are getting happier. It's either the supplemental light or the worm bin leachate in the water. (Or the urine.) (These are not for tuber production, they're for slips in the spring.)

Worm Bin

Sweet Potatoes are Happier

It's VERY function over form, but my wife was always the partner more concerned with aesthetics. I can get a lot of things to work well that I can't get to look nice. That always used to hold me back on projects like this, but since the divorce, these things can be rolled out MUCH quicker.

Well, there's mine. (So far.) Feel free to show me yours!

Having a sturdy shelf does help holding lots of plants in a small space. Would you consider adding a silver lining to the curtain such as the aluminum foil used for sun shade? It reflects light back onto the plants so they are well lit all the way round.

At this point, I'm mostly working with what's on hand. Something like you mentioned, or mylar emergency blankets could be in the future.

I added another shelving unit for seed starting. (I moved a few overflow houseplants onto it already.) No lighting yet, but that's likely to change as resources allow.





As for the seed starting:





The stuff coming up is Michihili Cabbage (O), wheat (S), and most likely lettuce. (Lettuce shares a row with a panamorous tomato. (H)) The stuff molding is most likely elderberry (A).

I recently has luck with some grow lights from eBay - T5 5000k LED strip lights

Not my favorite, of course with the LEDs, but I did have some tube style and … not only did those make the plants less happy, they drew more power and were hotter.
While heat can be ideal with an incandescent bulb pointed at your skull, it definitely burnt my overexcited oregano who grew into it.


Below you can see some comparisons, top shelf is the new one from eBay, middle is some old random actual LED strips I inherited, and bottom are the fluorescents.