experiments with plants

I'll admit it, I'm not much of a plant person. I don't know much about gardening - just enough to produce usable produce - and I know even less about house plants. But that doesn't always stop me from trying new tricks!

My mom came over a few weeks ago and taught me to snip off parts of my long-languishing begonia plant and place the cut ends in water to encourage the leggy stalks to create roots in the water. I looked at that and figured, why not try that with other plants?

For my first experiment, I took a 4-inch stalk of spearmint from a plant that I'd put in the kitchen windowbox at the beginning of this past spring, and placed it in a small, clean jelly jar filled with water. The results? Two weeks later, there are no roots, but there are new leaves!

Puzzling, but I'll keep an eye on it to see what it does next.

And the begonia snips? Three weeks or so later, and still no roots - but they look perfectly healthy so I'll keep them going for as long as they keep up the good work.