Small Green Shoot

No - I haven't noticed any of these in the economy of late, sadly, but if I thought that I could sprout it on my kitchen window sill, I promise I would give it my best shot! The small green shoot that I mean is the lemon grass plant that I have tried growing. I can't say just where I got this idea, it may have been Alys Fowler in her Edible Garden series but apparently if you put  into water the lemon grass stalks that you can buy in some supermarkets for Asian cooking,  they will produce roots and you can then plant them into pots and hey presto! you have your own lemon grass plant. A  useful novelty here in the south of the UK.
Being the sort of windowsill gardener who has in the past produced avocado plants from the stones and pineapple plants from the tops, I just had to give this challenge a go. The stalks I bought for this looked as if they may have been cut a little high - I have had some that looked more promising in the past but I chose the best I could find and popped them into a vase of water. I waited a full 2 weeks I think before I started checking for any signs of progress and when there were no signs after a further 2 weeks I simply forgot about them. I kept them in  the vase of water and simply added in any fresh herbs I brought in from the garden to have to hand for cooking. It was only when I realised that some lime scented mint had put on a lot of growth and seemed to be crying out to have its new roots in soil that I took everything out of the vase and discovered that the lemon grass had roots too. Wonderful!
I potted them up and waited again to see if the roots would take and go on to sprout new growth at the green end of the plant. And after several more weeks one of them did indeed. For something that took so long to grow roots and then produce a tiny green shoot it has rather taken off and the blades of green are growing noticeably almost from day to day.  Now of course I want to see if it will produce a further basal clump from the roots, something I could harvest and use to cook with. I may have to wait but then I am used to that by now.

 

All kinds of people are gardeners. They have all kinds of reasons for gardening. The one trait they must all have in common is patience, I think.