Plant Kingdom Propagation

Last spring Hubby Tony and I went to our city's farmer's market on opening day. There was a band playing, plants and produce for sale, vendors giving out samples. I spun a wheel of chance and won a small starter pot of mint plant.

Near the end of our visit Tony and I were sitting on a retaining wall listening to the music. I looked down and saw several sedum (stonecrop) leaves laying on the ground. I figured I the fallen leaves were fair game and knew they were easy to propagate. I picked them up and brought them home.

Back at the condo, I discovered I had gotten rid of all my flower pots, but I punched some holes in two recycled plastic containers and added soil. The mint went in one container. In the other I laid the sedum leaves on top of the soil. A month later some of the sedum leaves had shriveled up and died, but several had started growing tiny roots. All summer I watered the plants when I remembered to, and when I went out of town I took the containers down to my neighbor's deck.

Surprisingly, the mint never took off. The sedum plants grew, and when a big rainstorm came through a couple of leaves were knocked off and started growing themselves. At the end of the season I had to figure out what to do with the plants. The condo doesn't have any good place for house plants, and I knew there wasn't enough sun for the mint, but since sedum is sometimes grown as a house plant I decided to bring the pot inside and see what happened. It's made it through, but at this point is looking pretty scraggly.

Today, of course, is the first day of spring. Thanks to some above average temperatures a different variety of sedum in the living retaining wall across the street from our building has started to green up for the year. However, since the average last frost date for the area is April 7th I'm going to leave my fabricated houseplant inside until then. I think it will be happy to feel Nature.

Five years ago today: Virtual Fun