Quarantine Gardening

I planted two papaya trees with my Dad over spring break. The first papaya tree died in 4 weeks because of gophers eating the roots. I picked the rotting papaya off of the remaining tree and noticed the tree lean. The gophers must have gotten to the roots of this tree too. I cut open the papaya that was not rotten and it tasted bland. The lesson I learned is to have this fruit tree grow in a pot at first in order to protect the roots from gophers.

I started to grow garlic in water at home a few weeks ago, and in the beginning I saw some progress, but then it stopped growing. I told my grandma about my little experiment with the garlic, and she started growing it too. Yesterday, she sent me a picture of her garlic and it grew so fast and better than mine. She shared some of the growing techniques and I applied them to my garlic; hopefully I'll see some progress!

I attempted to hydroponically regrow lettuce indoors. In the articles I researched, it suggested that romaine lettuce is best for regrowing. I recently bought green leaf lettuce though, so I decided to regrow that. It went great for about a week, and the regrown leaves started to rip on its own. I either didn't give it enough sunlight or it reached its limit to growing without soil. To bring it back to life, I planted it in soil and let it sit outside. It started growing new leaves again, this time strong and dark green!