I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it many times: often, plants succeed against all odds. Many of you have poked a stem of this or that into the ground and low and behold, it rooted. We read about ways to propagate various plants, and the use of rooting hormone or other aides and sometimes these help tremendously. In other instances we use all the right products and materials and still our cuttings don’t take.
This post isn’t to tell you that if you do this or that you’ll absolutely be successful. This post is to acknowledge that plants and gardening frequently surprise us. The unexpected might happen, either to our delight or dismay. I say rejoice when it’s the former and shrug and move on if the latter.
Last winter I posted about potting up herbs indoors. Two weeks ago I decided to put the basil that I’d planted for that post outside, but before I did I cut most of the stems for use in cooking. It was likely that these stems would just get sunburned once the plant was in real light outside, so why not cook with these leaves? I poked the stems in a glass of water and have been harvesting them since. Today I decided that it might be time to toss out the remaining basil stems in this glass, but when I picked it up I noticed that these basil stems have grown roots. Against all odds, I have new basil plants for the garden.
