Please Kids, Try This At Home

I forgot to even mention the real reason I was bringing up the hibiscus in the first place! Big duh on me! A week after I planted the Plum Crazy hibiscus I knocked one of the shoots off the plant. ARGH! Tragedy! But I was a fast thinker and pushed the shoot into some compost moistened with Miracle Grow water. I unfortunately had used all my rooting compound and had never gotten around to getting more, so I would just have to wait and see.

The first two days it didn't even seem to notice that it had left the mother plant. Then it went limp. Oh no, well, I'll just wait. It kept going more and more limp, but the stem without leaves stayed upright. Day by day the leaves went brown and dropped off. It looked like it was losing the fight.

Then as the last few leaves dropped off, the whole stem straightened up and I could see at the base of each of the now departed leaves were new leaves. And when I checked, yes, there definitely were roots growing! I wasn't sure that it would even work, but I'm so glad that I tried it. Now I know how to propagate them too. If I can ever get them to actually survive that is.

If you think it looks sad right now, you should have seen it before! Can you see the new leaves starting to come in? I've already planted it out in the garden (about four days ago) and it is doing just fine.