Taking Root

I have my fair share of “designer” house plants lying around, but I have to give so much love and respect to my pothos’. My mom has grown pothos for as long as I can remember (I think she’s only ever had one pothos that she has simply propagated endless times), and it is such a classy plant. I have a couple different types of pothos, but my neighbor gave me this one before she moved, and I feel like that is almost unfair because this plant seriously is so beautiful.

My musa banana is putting out another leaf, surprise surprise!

This plant is one of the easiest, most forgiving plants I own. And, unlike my ZZ (a plant that literally doesn’t care if I acknowledge it ever again), the banana actually puts out new growth very quickly. When I got my banana, it was a foot tall and had two leaves. I left it outside all summer, I remembered to water it maybe once every three weeks, and it is pushing three feet tall. 

Got out for a lovely four miles on this Thanksgiving Day!

During the summer, the trees in my backyard are so full of leaves, my kitchen doesn’t get any light. I keep a Christmas cactus on the table, a ponytail palm on the fridge, and that’s it. I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed it before I had plants that need as much light as a monstera, but once those leaves have fallen off the trees, my kitchen gets all of the afternoon sun a tropical plant could wish for.

Doing a little experiment with my super sad crotons....

Maybe a year or two ago, my crotons started dropping leaves like crazy, and I kept burying the stems deeper and deeper in the soil. This fall, rather than just pushing the plants to the back of a shelf to wait out another season, I decided to take the plunge and chop the stems. I cut where the brown stem turned to green (roughly two inches beneath the leaves), dipped the newly cut tip in root hormone, and plopped them in these recycled tea tins my fiancé drilled holes into. (The leaves could for sure use a wiping down) I also decided to take the rest of the leafless stems and, rather than just throwing them away, see if they would grow new leaves too. So, I cut the two stems in half, dipped into some root hormone, and stuck them in dirt too. I realized the original plants had been grown from plugs, and it appeared the roots had been unable to get through the fabric, which would explain why my plants dropped their leaves. The roots were teeny tiny.

Anyway, if you were able to keep up, my experiment includes the following:

Two propagations that have leaves, but no roots (shown);

Two propagations that have roots (I cut the plug fabric off, so the roots are freeeee), but no leaves;

Two propagations that don’t have roots and don’t have leaves.

You walked in, and my heart went BOOM