Growing Potatoes in Aquarium

October 10th, 2020 

I want to see how a potato may grow in water. 

You can buy potatoes on Amazon

https://amzn.to/3guoe4j

For this purpose, I set up an aquarium garden with a wide enough hole in the planter to hold the potato.

 Let's put the potato in the planter. 

Make sure the growing stem buds (potato eyes) stay inside of the planter. 

Here is a closeup view of the buds.

Inside of the planter they go. 

And the planter goes on top of the aquarium. 

One week later, the stem buds start growing. 

November 8th, 2020 

One month old stems have roots and need an opening in the planter to grow through. 

Let's gently pull the potato out of the planter. 

Now let's take a close look to see where to cut the potato. 

First I want to remove the top part of the potato. 

Now let's cut the bottom part of the remaining potato lengthwise. 

I want to keep at least one growing stem on each part of the potato. 

In this example, one part has just one growing stem.

 And this part has three growing stems.

 Let's put this part back into the aquarium garden. 

Pull the roots and stems gently through the planter. 

I want to keep the potato above the water - only roots go into water. 

Make sure the growing ends of all stems protrude through the hole in the planter.

 Now stems have a way to grow through. 

Let's put the planter back on the aquarium. 

And I still have two other parts of the potato to grow in other aquariums. 

The part with one growing stem goes into this aquarium garden.

 Let's wait and see how it will grow. 

November 15th, 2020

 It took one week for one of three stems to grow about 7cm high. 

And it has leaves! 

The other two stems seem to be stuck under the planter. 

I am going to leave them as they are for now. 

10 days later on November 26th. 

There are more leaves growing on the stem. 

And the stem has grown about 25cm above the planter.

The other stems did not make it through the hole in the planter and did not grow at all.

 Let's put it in another aquarium garden. 

I like to keep more than one plant in each aquarium garden. 

I keep all my aquarium gardens next to a window, but away from direct sunlight.

December 17th...it's been another 3 weeks.

 The stem and leaves have grown noticeably. 

Here you can see the leaves. 

The first leaves are the largest. 

Here you can see the potato on January 4th, 2021

 It has been growing 3 months in my aquarium garden. 

Leaves grew a bit in the past couple weeks. 

There are a couple branches.

 The main stem is about 26inch (66cm) long. 

The roots remain about the same size. 

The long main stem has grow long and thin.

 It is too thin to support its own weight.

 It is broken in a couple places. 

This thin stem needs some support to lean on for keep growing. 

For that reason I will remove potatoes from my aquarium gardens. 

I may grow potatoes again if a need arises for fast growing plants to keep algae in check. 

Have fun and happy aquarium gardens :)