Sunday, January 24, 2010

A little winter surprise

This 'pot' of plants has had an interesting history. Way back last winter I ordered some seeds to try in my new garden. I use stevia a lot for sweetening things naturally and saw that they sold the seeds! So, I planted the entire package in this plastic salad container, covered it, put it in my sun porch and left it alone. Nothing happened. After two months I gave up, took the cover off and let it dry out. Then one day as I was passing by, I noticed some wee green shoots!!! I raced the thirsty, cracked dirt over to the faucet and gave it a drink. The wee green turned into two stevia plants. So I watered and watched them grow. I pinched them back and watched some more. Summer passed and part-way into fall I noticed a new green shoot - but it was different. I almost pulled it, thinking, "weed". But, considering the gumption these little stevia plants had shown, I decided to leave the new green thing and see what it produced. Finally - it produced a purple flower - a wave petunia, to be exact. How fun. By the time the flower bloomed it was nearly winter. How exciting for this Canadian girl! In the spring I had a wave petunia given to me as a house-warming and I had to bring it into the porch several times before the frosts all gave over to summer heat and a seed must have fallen into my stevia plant. The ironic thing is that I tried planting wave petunias from seed last year as well - not a single one germinated let alone grew and bloomed!

3 comments:

Deborah said...

Way to go with the Stevia. I didn't do very well with mine. The flower is lovely too and I'm glad you left it in the pot. It looks like a nice plant gift sort of thing you'd get from a florist.

Jayne said...

Isn't that how it goes? What a sweet surprise!

thecrazysheeplady said...

This is hilarious - would sooo happen to me. Glad you got a couple surprises!