Old Year, New Growth

When my neighbor moved away this summer, she left me a houseplant. A sadly leggy, overgrown houseplant absolutely bursting out of the tiny pot it had probably been growing in for years:

I did some research (hello, people on YouTube who make videos documenting everything they do! thank you!) and decided drastic measures were in order – I would chop the plant down entirely, replant the stalk, and just have to hope it had enough energy stored up to grow back. Here it is just prior to repotting, in all its straggly glory:

When I pulled it out of the pot...it turned out there was basically no dirt left. The whole thing in there was roots, roots circled around and around themselves, with nowhere else to go:

This is where the drastic measures came in – I chopped the plant to pieces. Based on the advice I'd garnered, I tried a few different things: repotting the bottom piece of the stalk (the one with the roots); planting the other chopped-up sections of the stalk in the hope they might also regrow; and placing the top piece of the plant in water. This was in late August:

Then nearly two months passed with no sign of life. I know the guy in the one YouTube video had said nothing happened until well after he'd given up hope...but still, I gave up hope. Then one day – two little green nubs on the original stalk! By late October, this was going on:

 By a week or so into November, I decided it was time to clean house. The bottom piece of the stalk – the one with the benefit of roots – was doing well, but there didn't seem to be anything going on with the other sections, and the top bit I'd put in water had died off entirely.

So, all right, one plant sacrificed and one plant gained, that's still a success. But when I went to pull the other pieces of stalk out of their pot, lo and behold – one of them had rooted! I'd thought that scraggly bit at the top was just the top getting distorted as the stalk dried out, but apparently it was actually the beginnings of new growth. Look! Roots:

In the final tally, one plant sacrificed and two plants gained. This picture is from mid-December, and they're both doing great:

Moral of the story, if there is one: Plants are resilient and awesome.

Other moral of the story: Repot your plants! Don't make the poor things exist in a space many sizes too small.