Oh, dear readers, the great big fig tree experiment has just gotten a little more interesting. It’s been a little over two months since Ms. Jeannie last reported on the status of the fig tree that she’s trying to grow from a clipping.

To refresh, this is where we left off…

Since early March, Ms. Jeannie has been watering it and keeping her eye on the progress. Only it’s been difficult to see what’s going on in there, even though the cup is clear.  The peanut shells have little threads on them which can look like roots if you are an optimist like Ms. Jeannie! So yesterday, Ms. Jeannie decided to dump out (carefully) the contents of the cup to check on the status of her little sprouts.

This is what she found…

And after the dump…

Not a sprout in sight! Where oh where have they all gone? Now the only thing in their place is a mysterious white powdery fungus, and shriveled, wrinkly bark.

The little sprouts had been doing so good in the newspaper and plastic bag leg of the journey. But once they made the big leap to the cup, it seems things went awry. Hmmm…

After some discussion with Mr. Jeannie Ology, it was discovered that the peanut shells may have been the culprit. They were whole roasted peanut shells, lightly salted. Ohhh. Ms. Jeannie hadn’t even considered that aspect before she added the shells into her soil mixture. Oops. Essentially, she “salt cured” her fig clipping. Which evidently, newly formed sprouts do not favor.

Too much salt in soil causes water to move outside of plant cells, so even though Ms. Jeannie was watering her clipping occasionally – the plant cells weren’t getting the proper amount of hydration causing the sprouts to shrivel up and fall off. This also explains why the stem looks dry and wrinkly.

As for the fungus, Ms. Jeannie could have removed it with a little toothbrush cleaning – but she felt awful about the salting, and the clipping looked pretty much done in, so off it went to the great garbage can graveyard. Sorry clipping – we’ll do better next time.

But funny enough, do you remember the other fig experiment? The one where she was trying to root the clipping in water? In March this is how it looked…

And now in May…this is how it looks…

Look at the underwater view…

So many roots and so little effort!

This is by far the easiest way to grow a fig clipping. No maintenance involved here – just clip and store in water for about three months. Now all Ms. Jeannie has to do is figure out how to handle these sprouts best. Should she pull it out of the jar and plant it in plain potting soil? Or should she leave it to linger in the water longer?

She could also dig up a few scoopfuls of dirt from underneath her well established big fig bushes in the yard. Clearly they are happy with that type of soil, so that could be the base for her potting soil mixture.  Common sense tells her that in the wild, these fig bushes would not have been coddled so much! It’s not rocket science after all, but Ms. Jeannie would hate to lose two fig clippings to carelessness. Such decisions!

While she decides what to do about the figs, let’s look and see how the homemade newspaper seed pots are holding up. Six weeks ago, they looked like this in all their brand new beauty…

And here they are now, after surviving out of doors, for 40+ days including 7 days of continuous rain…

A little more crinkly, but other than that practically as good as new! Ms. Jeannie really thought that after that week-long rain event last week that they were going to be a soggy mess! But they weren’t at all. These newspaper pots held up beautifully. Ms. Jeannie speculates it is because she double wrapped them using two sections of newspaper instead of one. If you’d like  simple step by step instruction on how to make these budget friendly seed pots, click here.

Now all we have to do is wait for the spinach to grow, grow, grow. Ms. Jeannie planted some seeds directly in two of her flower pots as well. The pots were supposed to be spinach, parsley and basil but, the Gerber daisies from last year over-wintered and now decided they were ready for round two!

Ms. Jeannie’s hoping that there is room underneath the soil for all three! The parsley is taking off like wildfire and the gerber daisies are an inch taller every time Ms. Jeannie looks at them! To encourage her vegetable – Ms. Jeannie painted a sign and stuck it in the pot. Maybe it will help inspire the seedlings:)

So there you have it, two garden experiments  both turning out differently then expected.  That is sort of the thrill of gardening though, isn’t it?

When you are playing games with Mother Nature, you just never know exactly what could happen.  You may have a general idea, or a general course of action, but Mother Nature  likes to play her own hand from time to time as well. She’s quite a card shark that one. And talk about a poker face? She’ll bluff with the best of them:)

Are you experimenting with (or gambling on!) anything in your garden this year? If so, please share your adventure in the comments section!