a non-fannish post: ipomoea

[buggery]

In the midst of everything else I've been up to lately...

A big sweet potato that I'd had hanging around my kitchen started sprouting from one end. Pretty serious sprouting, six separate eyes, the sprouts each branching into multiple stems and the longest sprout nearly a foot tall.

I've long thought it would be fun to grow some ipomoea. They're beautiful -- often seen in landscaping as well as vegetable gardens, and I'm fond of the idea of a plant that's practical as well as decorative to grow. I just never got round to it.

So I cut the end with the sprouts off, ate the rest, and stuck the stump in water. I didn't have any rooting compound (I've never used it) but I figured the worst thing that could happen would be that it might not develop any roots.

Well... there are roots on it now! So I'm ready to plant it.

Which is why I'm making this post.

I've never grown ipomoea before, and I've also never tried growing a plant from a cutting. I'm hoping for some guidance from someone who's done one or the other, or both.

Planting it outside isn't an option, because I live in an apartment building. (Theoretically I could put it in a planter on our roof balcony, but then I wouldn't get to see it and it might be vandalised or stolen, plus it's not going to be temperate enough for outdoor planting of a sweet potato here for at least 6-8 more weeks.) Mainly I'm looking for advice as to the kind of soil mix to give it, whether I should add fertiliser (which I don't really like to use), whether I should plan to transplant it within the first 6-12 months, and/or how big a container I should plant it into and how the container's size will affect the size/growth habit of the storage root.

I'm looking forward to a lovely trailing vine with purple flowers to keep my fern, palm, bamboo, miniature cypress and ficus company. (:

Comments

[astromachy.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say thanks for your request for Arachne/Athena for the Femslash 05 Ficathon.

I dug out my copy of Metamorphoses just to assure myself that it couldn't be done, and realised that the myth as Ovid explained it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. I had a blast reworking it, and it wouldn't have occurred to me without your request, so it was much appreciated. :)

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Whee! Now that I've finally gotten the story I wrote for the Femslash Ficathon done and posted, I can go read the one you wrote for me. I saw this comment earlier in the week, and it took a herculean exercise of willpower for me *not* to go read it immediately when I saw that you'd chosen to write Arachne/Athena.

It does require a re-imagining of the text of the myth as it's come down to us, but most of the extant versions of classical mythology are already re-tellings of older versions -- and Ovid in particular was notorious for deviating from his source texts, especially when one compares his take to Greek writers' about the same characters and events.

I've had the happy experience of writing a story I'm pleased with that I never would have tackled without a challenge request, myself, so I understand exactly why you're thanking *me* for making the request.