So, this wandering jew plant, right? Everyone goes on about how they’re super easy, practically grow themselves. Well, lemme tell ya, mine wasn’t exactly living its best life when I first got it. Looked a bit… blah, if you know what I mean. The leaves were okay, but not that amazing purple you see in pictures.
I’d see these vibrant plants online, all lush and colorful. Mine? Kinda pale, a bit stretched out, like it was searching for something. I’m no plant expert, not by a long shot, but I figured, it’s gotta be the light. Seemed like the most obvious thing to check first. I fussed with watering, sure, but the light felt like the main suspect for its lackluster look.
Figuring Out The Light Situation
My first thought was, ‘More sun, definitely!’ So, I plonked it right on the sunniest windowsill I have. Seemed logical. Give it all the light it could possibly want. Wrong move. After a few days, I noticed some of the leaves were looking a bit scorched, a little crispy around the edges. Okay, note to self: this fella doesn’t want to be baked alive. My bad.
So, I swung in the complete opposite direction. ‘Alright, maybe it’s a shade lover then,’ I mumbled to myself. I moved it to a much darker spot, a corner of the room that didn’t get much direct light at all. Well, that wasn’t it either. It got even leggier, reaching out with these long, sad stems. The color didn’t get any better; if anything, it looked even more washed out. Clearly, hiding it in the shadows wasn’t the answer.
I was starting to get a bit frustrated, to be honest. I kept moving this plant around my house. It was truly living up to the ‘wandering’ part of its name, thanks to me. I was thinking, maybe these plants just don’t like me, or I picked a faulty one from the shop. You know how it is.
The ‘Aha!’ Moment
Then, I tried a spot that was sort of a compromise. It was near a window, so it got plenty of brightness, but it wasn’t in the direct, harsh sunbeams for hours on end. More like bright, indirect light for most of the day. And guess what? That was the sweet spot!
It took a little while, wasn’t an overnight miracle or anything. But slowly, I started to see a real difference. The new leaves that came in were a much richer, deeper purple. The silvery stripes on them seemed to pop more. And it stopped looking so stretched and desperate. It just looked… healthier. More compact and full.
So, for me, the whole wandering jew light thing boiled down to finding that good, consistent, bright spot, but not direct, scorching sun. It was a bit of trial and error, moving it here and there, but we got there in the end. Now it’s actually one of my favorite plants because it looks so much better. Just had to pay a bit of attention to what it was trying to show me with its leaves, I suppose. Simple as that, once I finally figured it out.
