In May 2021, I propagated some leaf stems from our Pothos plant. Before it could get planted in soil, the stems needed to grow roots in water. It was an experiment on our part to see much the roots grew, so we left a majority of the stems in water. Look at the picture on the far left: it’s a glob of roots intertwined together.
After roots appeared, I planted some in soil and left it on the porch. Pothos is known to be a hardy variety, so I thought nothing of leaving it outdoors in the blistering heat. How the leaves looked after sun exposure in the July heat wave was dismal; singed and droopy. Even moving it indoors and extra watering couldn’t save the two stems.
Except for the burnt leaves, the propagating experience was successful. It’s given me confidence to try with other hardy plants, and I’ll probably decide after watching a gazillion YouTube tutorial videos albeit with scaled-down enthusiasm. YT plant enthusiasts make it sound so simple and fast to propagate, but my experience took almost a year to produce noticeable results. Nevertheless, it’s been and continue to be an interesting adventure for our family to, finally, see the relationship between caring for a plant and having it thrive in return.
Weather is warming up and I’m already feeling the happiness to plant something. I have leftover seeds of Korean pepper and perilla leaves from last year, which totally flopped from my inexperience and squirrel mayhem, that I could plant again. To eat our own grown vegetable would be such a treat. This could be the year. Chris got one bag of soil from Costco, which is the usual Costco bulk size – packed and heavy like a bag of rocks. I have lots of dirt to play with in the coming months.
Thanks Cee for hosting this challenge! Hope you and all my visitors have a wonderful Valentine’s Day and start to a new week.
Categories: Container Gardening Nature observations and thoughts Photography
singlikewildflowers
Welcome to my blog! My name is Esther and I'm so happy you are here. I'm an avid nature photographer and a daydreaming thinker. My posts revolve around photos of nature's beauty, homeschooling adventures with my 2 kids, sporadic reflections on my child's heart condition, Bible reading reflections, gardening feats, and other mish mash things. Hopefully you'll leave encouraged, pensive, or smiling at the simple things of life. Thank you for stopping by and hope you'll find some interesting posts to read!
sing like wildflowers 
You did very well Esther. It looks healthy – all that dirt and we’ll call you Farmer Esther.
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Thank you Linda! Farmer Esther at your service. Nice nickname; much better than black thumb. lol
Propagating is a rewarding process but a time consuming one.
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Gardening is hard – I was luckier outside than with inside plants. When we moved to the State sin 1966, the next-door neighbor was an elderly woman, in her late 80s/early 90s at the time. She was a widow and her/husband had bought the house decades before. When they moved in, he bought her a pink rosebush as a present and she planted it – from that one rosebush, she propagated rosebushes for the entire perimeter of the yard – she had a huge lot, much bigger than mine. All from the same original pink rosebush! She put the clipping in water, it rooted and when big enough, planted it into the ground with a glass jar over it. Voila! They thrived and she took care of her yard well into her 90s until she went into a nursing home and passed away shortly thereafter.
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That’s impressive rose propagating from your late neighbor! What a meaningful experience for her to expand on her rose garden from one that her husband gifted. Beautiful story.
Will you do outdoor gardening again this spring?
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Yes, her yard was a sight to behold – all from that first pink rose and when she went into a nursing home, relatives bought the home. First people didn’t do any yard work, but they continued to thrive. That couple split up and another relative bought the house and he tore out half of the rose bushes to build a wooden shed where he did his woodworking and then parked his boat in the backyard. She was dead by then and likely rolling over in her grave.
I had a nice garden for butterflies, fed the birds back in 2010 then a neighbor moved in with a pit bull out 24/7 and didn’t clean up and we got rats. I had to pull in all the birdfeeders nd baths as we had pest control bait for rats. Then we had two back-to-back Polar Vortexes and I lost a lot of my plants … the entire perennial garden was wiped out. I don’t know what to do now – if I replace those flowers/plants/bushes, I would wait until I’m retired and have more time to spend on a garden. I enjoyed it, but also never replaced the flowers as I started a walking regimen. A fellow blogger who lives in Canada, but has the same weather as me and same age as me (but retired), said not a good idea to start a garden from scratch. She said the weather is so erratic now – in the Spring/early Summer, we had no rain and she was out there watering all her plants, especially the roses, then we had all the rain, day after day, and she worried they’d get root rot. My backyard does not look great though – I was disgusted with what happened and only have bushes and one hydrangea plant and a few roses left now.
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