Found

This week seems to be full of finds.

There was the lost and found. With the new bed, I moved the agapathus.  You know the feeling that you may have missed / lost a plant somewhere.  It seems I missed one.

Then the new find. Agave parryis have a reputation for offseting, so it was only a matter of time.  This is the main view of my two different agave parryis.

Looking down from behind them today noticed this

Thankfully the two forms are very different.

That pale blue colour and the orange spines are a give away that it's HK1684. As this is my favourite parryi form I am happy.

A surprise find.  We have been having a great summer, the succulents are loving it but someone is struggling to find somewhere cooler. 

She is not allowed on the flower beds, I may have to let her off this time.

It's all about aloe polyphyllas here

So the main event in the garden so far this summer has been the aloe polyphylla flower.

They are strange flowers, as it grows any lack of water on hot days results in it just flopping around. 

I kept a close eye on the bees to see if they found it and what other aloe flowers were in flower at the same time.  The aloe striatulas were flowering away and I brought a big pot of aloe aristata over from my parents.  They are moving and I agreed to look after the pot until they were settled, very convenient.

The orginal plan was to take some pollen to a friend house, but their flower was way behind mine, and the two did not overlap.  It shows how far ahead the rockery can get. So plan B, have as many flowering aloes around as possible, and hope the bees do their job and something is compatible. 

A long shot, but you never know.  Although now we do as look what I found.

Not exactly a massive seed pod harvest, but one is better tha none.  I'm out there each day checking on it.  The aloe aristatas also have a few seed pods, the aloe striatula still have flowers, so time will tell how many seed pods develop there.

The next stage is to see if any of the pods produce seeds.  Then a whole other set of fun.  To prepare I have also been trying to germinate a set of 50 aloe polyphylla seeds I purchased at the end of last summer. There is lots of information about germinating them by putting them in water, so this was the methd used.

After about 10 days half the seeds had germinated. By 20 days all but 4 had germinated which was amazing. They were potted up into groups and given my skill at killing seedlings I expected most not to make it.  One pot full succumbed within a few days, going from the water to soil obviously wasn't popular.  I hoped to maybe have 2 or 3 left to grow into plants.  So was pleasantly surprised to have managed to keep 12 alive in one pot and 4 in another.

They are almost past the danger stage, hopefully they will not be so susceptable to damping off or to drying out. I have great plans for a few more polyphyllas; one in the main succulent bed, a couple in the new bed by the workshop and then some on the planned green roof. There is probably space for a couple in the front as well.  Can you ever have too many?