New Babe! Prayer Plant (Maranta leucoreura)

I decided it had been long enough since I last bought a new plant.  Particularly since I have given some away and taken some to work, it was starting to feel a little stale around here.  (Granted, I to have a number of babes about to bloom, or in bloom, but still - I need some new green!)  So I stopped by Bucks Country Gardens 10 minutes before closing tonight and picked up two beauties (second plant to follow in subsequent post).  The image below is the prayer plant repotted and nestled into its new home by an east-facing window between two dormant polka dot plants.

This plant was about $5 and came in a 4" container.

I decided to step it up into a slightly larger pot - mainly because that is the only size I currently have, but also because I suspected this little guy had outgrown its nursery plastic.  I have gotten into the habit lately of lining my pots with stones even if they have built in drains and water saucers.  So that was step 1, shown below:

As I suspected, we have a little bit of pot-bound-ness going on here.

 
 I took some potting soil I had already mixed a few weeks ago for, I think, my dracaena, and added some peat moss to give it more substance.  I put a few scoops in over the stones to give those bound roots something to sink into, and then just filled soil in around the sides of the pot.  I sometimes forget to keep the soil an inch-ish below the lip of the pot, but I think in this case I did all right, although its more like 1/2 inch.  (This is helpful when watering the plant, gives the water somewhere to sit while it slowly absorbs into the dry soil.  Otherwise, you are dealing with super slow absorption and have to stand there slowly pouring tiny amounts of water onto the soil, watching it absorb in before you add more.)

A couple close-ups of this beautiful red-veined, variegated leaf pattern!

 
I think this plant will do well near a window, in a cluster of other plants where humidity should be a little bit better.  I'm still trying to think up some solution to increasing humidity around these clusters.