Hey there

I over-watered my beautiful salvia before I visited my mother in another city. Got home to a dead brown mess, bar a single leaf and two microscopic leaf sprouts at the bottom where the last hint of green was rotting. The only node was on the bottom leaf. The stem was less than 2mm wide. It was a tiny piece of plant.

I cut as far as I could from the brown main stem and decided to stick it in clean, wet perlite. As sure as hell, it grew some rooty hair and I potted it. And held thumbs.

It's been 8 months since and she is still going! But not strong. The stem is still at its thickest about 4mm, so no possibility of standing up by itself, especially at 30cm/1 foot high and growing, so I have made a trellis and use a bamboo skewer to keep her up. I doubt I'd be able to coax it into becoming a creeper

It has dropped half a gram of dry leaf over the past 8 months, so easy does it. Not like I'm compelled towards visiting Sally space the way I am to spice/harmala mixes.

Is there any hope for this plant? The leaves start oval and then become narrow, yet there is now signs of branching at the second node. But it couldn't support a very long branch.

I'm not giving up on this little fighter, but would love some input from experienced growers.

Here are pics from the front and back of the plant. (Apologies, pics won't display in post)

http://imgur.com/a/UCXA2

She doesn't look too bad. Mostly looks like she's a little light starved. Divinorums like indirect light, but too little light and they get leggy, thin, scrawny, as opposed to those nice beefy stems on well-illumined specimens.

I'd suggest getting her next to a fluorescent light perhaps, or a better-lit area of the house.

If you put her outside I think she'd get too shocked to adapt. Slowly raise the light level and she should get stronger and stronger.

Honestly she does look healthy, can't see any diseases, just scrawny, so good work

Thanks!

It's winter here and that spot is the most sunny in the apartment, but for a very limited time per day so maybe some artificial light may help. Our wind and rain at the moment would blow her apart in seconds!

Lacking financial means at present for non-essentials, I had to ghetto tek this from stuff I already had. A bright, cool white fluorescent and for good measure put two UV tubes on it too to increase the blue.

Must say that the fluorescent has lit up the whole corner surrounding the plant with good reflection coming off the tiles and white cupboards. Plus the filtered and indirect sunlight, this can't hurt.

Let's see... I'll keep an eye on the phototropic mechanics and fine-tune from there.

http://imgur.com/a/RJAfe

Looks good, dtrypt, I'm sure your sage will be taking in more energy and strengthening herself with it

That's interesting about the UV lights, I've never really heard of them being used, and I don't think it's totally necessary but let us know how it turns out.

If you report on how she's doing in a while I'm sure others who find themselves with a weak sage might learn a bit

Thanks kerelsk

It definitely did not hurt by adding UV. Also using array of 24 strong cool bluish LEDs to bomb the plant with more light.

It is now coming alive all over. Went from a wiry stem with leaves only, to branches sprouting on almost all nodes and two nice shoots from the bottom (if you can call it that). Stem is visibly thickening.

Not waiting for leaves to droop, but rather giving it a small amount of water every few days. She definitely prefers this.

The planet has also shifted so as to give the plant about two more hours of filtered sunlight now.

I think we're going to be okay

http://imgur.com/a/4uCJH

I made a bleached white paper "reflector", so it's getting bathed in light from all sides

http://imgur.com/iahKHL2

The top is doing really well and you can see very good growth when compared to the pic in my first post

http://imgur.com/7EwoIjh


PS: This has been 24 hours of light since kerelsk's advice. UV and LED only at night as they are portable and need recharging every day. 5W Fluorencent at the top, an inch above.