It began with randomly trying to propagate my money tree. We’d just re-organised my desk area and I put my little money tree nodes into a mason jar and put it by the windowsill (you can see it in the background of these photos).
Unfortunately, being so close to the window burned some of its leaves because the sun gets very strong towards the afternoon, so I moved it to the top of my bookshelf instead.
I thought it’d died. But lo and behold! It’s starting to grow roots! The main stem has started to grow a whole host of roots, and even the leaf nodes have started to show signs of sprouting roots.
Jacky thought there was a problem with it because it looked like little aliens but nope – look at all these roots that are growing out, yay:
Then came my spring onions, which I initially left outside on the balcony but have now brought indoors and placed it by a window (I don’t want bugs to be eating them). This is a photo from 5th May:
Don’t worry – they were only put up there for the photo. I originally grew them in water before moving them to this box. It doesn’t drain as it’s actually a storage container, but the clear plastic allows me to see how much water is in there so I don’t drown them.
We had celery in the fridge that I was planning to grow too. I put a pot upside down in the container to save the space for my celery for when it’s ready to plant in soil as well. After I planted the spring onions, I chopped off the bottom of my celery and stuck it in water.
In the small, red pot next to it we planted some amaranth seeds that we got ages ago from our local library (they were given them out! So sweet). I have no idea what they are but whatever. Haha. Jacky wanted them planted so I obliged. They’ve sprouted already and seem to be thriving on my balcony.
The spring onions look like this today and we’ve already eaten from it 3x:
9-10 days later and my celery looks like this:
For a week it looked like nothing was happening. Then on day 8, you could see the tiiiiniest bit of growth in the middle. Now that it’s started to grow out, it’s actually growing really quickly. You can already see a difference between day 9 and 10 in the photos above.
I was getting a little worried at first because I think I stuck the toothpicks too low on the celery and the bottom was juuust about underwater. I didn’t want to re-stick the toothpicks though because I’d already made holes in the poor thing. If I do this again, I’d stick the toothpicks in at an angle so the bottom can be more immersed in water… like the avocado pip I just dunked today:
To be honest, when I was reading instructions online to stick the toothpicks in at an angle, I first started like this:
#genius… not. In my defence, that tiiiiny little cup of latte isn’t finished yet. I wasn’t thinking straight. So I re-poked it. If this pip doesn’t grow, it’s my own fault anyway. Sorry, avocado.
Initially I was apprehensive about growing an avocado tree but Jacky said, “You can put it on the balcony once it gets bigger. You’re growing a money tree! Why not an avocado tree?” I couldn’t argue with that.
Also I’m very proud to say that my money tree is still alive and so is my ZZ plant and what’s left of my snake plant. My money tree has grown up so well! This is from about 2yrs ago:
And this is now:
One of the trunks shrivelled and died, unfortunately, but I am thankful the other 3 are still doing well. You can see where one of the stems is shorter than the other two because that’s the one I cut for propagation.
But even in the before photos it’d already grown significantly! I didn’t take any photos of when I first bought it because, honestly, I didn’t think I’d be able to keep it alive (like my aloe. Let’s not talk about my aloe. I think I can give up on keeping aloe alive now. I’ve killed 2 already.) I actually bought it when it was about the size of my ZZ plant in this pic:
(Over there, on the shoe case, on the right!) I never took close up photos of it either because, again, I thought it’d die. I really should have, though. You can definitely see its growth since. This was from 6mo ago:
And this is now:
Meanwhile, my snake plant once looked like this:
And now…
The rest of it died of root rot, despite me changing out the soil and trying to save it multiple times. These two are fighters though.
Blessings,
Crystina