March Plant Update

March 26, 2022

As we near the end of March, here's an update on how the plants are doing. I might make this sort of post a recurring thing, provided something interesting happens that month, because having a visual record of plant growth makes me feel like I sort of know what I'm doing. (I don't, but it's the illusion of competency.)

The most exciting news I have is that the angel wing is starting to flower! I found out about this because I knocked some petals off of it while I was moving it.

The polka dot plants are doing wonderfully. A little over a month ago, the parent plant (the one in the turtle pot) was so tall it couldn't even hold itself up, so I cut everything off. There were no salvageable leaves on the bottom, it looked incredibly pathetic, and I was fully expecting it to die. A few of the stems had healthy growth on top, which I threw in a jar of water in a desperate attempt to get some survivors out of this ordeal. But in a miraculous turn of events, the cuttings survived, and the parent plant grew back! The bad thing is that they're growing so fast that they're looking tall and stupid... again.

My pride and joy, the nerve plant, has grown back very nicely from the haircut I gave it in December! It was getting tall and scraggly, but it's looking properly bushy now. There are already more baby leaves starting to poke out, so I'm anticipating a very voluminous-looking plant over the summer.

Before haircut

After haircut

Conversely, the purple plant isn't doing as great. One of the stems died, so I moved the remaining one from the 4-inch pot to a 2-inch so it wouldn't drown. I don't think it's a fan of the move. I'll be babying it in hopes that it perks back up again, but I find these plants so hard to read that I'm not really sure what it'll do.

For the most part, things are looking dandy as we head into spring. Fertilization season is starting shortly and I'm terrified because they've already been growing like it's their job over the winter.