A Lazy Gardening Update

Remember a few months ago when I decided that I had failed at propagating a store-bought sweet potato? Nothing had happened. I figured I had done it wrong – put the potato in upside down, didn’t give it enough light, gave it too much water, something. Most people would’ve tossed the potato at that point but I ended up just letting it sit. I actually don’t think I made the decision to let it sit, it just sat. It wasn’t rotting but it also wasn’t doing anything.

One day, during dinner, we suddenly noticed that something was happening.

We let it go until this giant shoot grew off of it.

Then I snapped off the slip to grow it in water. And it did!

The original sweet potato has continued to grow new slips for the past few months. I’m curious to see if it is immortal and will continue to grow slips as long as it is kept in water or if it will eventually shrivel up from using all of its inside nutrition. From “this potato is a dud” to “this potato may be immortal” in two months.

Patience is not one of my particular strengths. Even when I am patient, I tend to label myself as “lazy” for not moving on a decision or project quickly. I suppose that sometimes you need to act quickly (like when I watched a bunny sneak under my fence and head towards my strawberry patch this morning and ran after it). With gardening, though, one of the main things it teaches you is patience and just waiting to see what happens. There is no failure. It’s all an experiment. All we can do is slow down and observe.