Busy weekend

It has been a busy and productive weekend with a bit of everything, plant shopping, looking around a public gardens and a good amount of time in the garden. This is a lovely time of year, with all the echeverias in flower along with the aloes.  Over the last couple of days I have actually been planting stuff, which is unusual for me.  I am much better with plants in pots than I am at plants in the ground, to be honest I am not a very good gardener but that is for another post. 

I did make time to take a picture of this recent purchase in full flower.  As the day went on the bees were buzzing around it, although the ones in my garden seem to prefer the yellow flowers of the echeverias to reds and oranges.

I will have to go back to being lazy again, so I have more time to blog.

Unusual sign

We were visiting a garden last week and found part of it closed with this sign on the gate:

 

We had all sorts of images going around our heads of trees behaving inappropriately.

Another lovely surprise.

I have shown quite a few pictures of bromelaids so you may have guessed I quite like them.  For me they are one of the plants that symbolize jungle / tropical planting.  While I keep meaning to get more so far I have only bought one, blibergia nutans variegata. You sometimes see this touted as hardy in parts of the UK, so it seemed a good place to start.

I have had it for 3 years now and left it in the cold frame over the winters. It has coped without any problems, not even marking.  In fact it is more at risk from me forgetting that this is one plant that I actually have to water. I have been desperate for it to flower but nothing.  This year as it had formed a clump I split it, which will allow me to try some out of the cold frame next winter.  I have also made a concerted effort to actual water my plant this year, it feels very strange to be sayig that at the start of May, but it has been such a dry Spring and we have had no real rain at all.  Then outside this evening and I found this:

Looking forward to seeing how it develops.  With everything going on in the garden this year, it is rapidly becoming my best year so far!

Sempervivum virgil

I have had this sempervivum for a couple of years now and is one that I would highly recommend.  It has several things going for it:

1. It offsets like mad so you have a lovely clump in the first year
2. While it changes colour throughout the year it always stands out from the crowd
3. It doesn't suffer from major die back over winter, unlike many semps

Here is it yesterday and as you can see despite me taking countless offsets off already last year it has formed a lovely clump and will only get better through the summer.

Another weekend, another road trip.

The beautiful spring continues, this time it was a trip to Norfolk for a few days to see some friends, look around some nurseries and visit a cactus mart. Norfolk has two fantastic nurseries for the exotic garden fan, Amulree and Urban Jungle. There are always things that catch my eye at both, this year at Amulree it was these stunning agave ovatifolias.

At Urban Jungle, part of the fun is walking around their different planting sections, sadly it is totally the wrong time of year for the edible jungle, but it was great to see the planting wall had survived despite the terrible winter. The ferns in the gaps are mainly starting to grow again and in a month or so should be back to its best again.  This is a clever very way of creating a wall, with full descriptions on the blog of Jamie who built it before heading off on his travels (Tumbleweed Traveller).

Then it was off to see the friends which I will cover in another post as they deserve it, if for no other reason than the very memorable line dancing disco night they took me to! The whole reason for the trip was to join the local British Cactus and Succulent Society trip to a catus mart on the Saturday. There is always a difficult choice at these shows; do you walk around to see all the stalls before deciding what to buy, or do you buy as you go so you don't risk someone else getting their hands on the best plants. Normally when shopping, as my OH will confirm, I like to look at all the options, comparing them before finally making my decision. At the shows though there are far too many other eager shoppers and you can't risk someone else getting their grubby little mitts on that prized plant. Having got most of the way around, I found someone with two trays full of aloe hybrids. You wont be surprised to know that I spent quite a while on this stand going through them all, checking I hadn't missed any and which were the best plants. 

There is another great point at any event like this, when everyone re-groups and you all have a nosy through what the others are taking home.  There are the looks of envy that someone else got the one plant you were after, discussions about plants you don't know about and sometimes quick trips back into the show to try and make a last minute purchase. This cactus caught my eye in one of the members boxes,  it almost looked stitched and I had a feeling my OH would appreciate the patterns / textures.

After a very nice lunch, it was off over the border to probably the largest cactus nursery in the UK.  Only a few days before I had been talking with some friends about why we don't have any really large succulent nurseries in the UK.  They had just come back from Germany and shown pictures of these giant green houses full of succulents of every description. So walking into Southfields, I was proved wrong when I was greeted by this:

The place is huge, rows and rows of tables stuffed full of cacti of every form.  Anyone who things succulent gardens lack colour needs to visit somewhere like this:

While shopping at a show requires one set of tactics, shopping here required another, leaving plants until you have looked around risks you never finding the plants again. It was not unusual to bump into people wondering up and down the many isles muttering to themselves about why didn't they pick that plant up when they first saw it.

After a fantastic couple of days, it was back home to pot up my purchases, here are ones from Southfields and the show.

I think my OH is slightly concerned about the appearance of cacti on top of the agaves, aloes and echeverias, but she need not worry I more than enough to keep me going without getting interested in cacti as well.

Is this the end for plant number 1?

I have been posting updates of my echeveria adonis blue hybrid as they develop (the hybrid, the flower). I have been wondering how much flowering will spoil the look of the plant and what will happen to it once the flowers have finished.  As you can see below is still going strong a month after it started flowering.

There are two types of echeveria flowers, those that flower off the stem in which case the plant just continues growing from the growth point, or flowers that form from the growth point meaning the plant has to branch or offset to continue growth. The parents fall into both groups, e. pulidonis flowers off the stem (although it can put so much energy into flowering that it puts out offsets to survive) while e. rosea branches with each stem eventually becoming the flower.  The initial signs were that this hybrid would flower off the stem, but looking now the growth point also seems to be a flower stalk with no new leaves forming.  I am not sure if you can make it out in this photo.

If this is the case I can only guess what will happen next, I am assuming the main plant will slowly be taken over by pups (of which there are plenty).

In some respects I am pleased; I preferred it's more compact rosette form before flowering anyway, all the pups are doing well and growing away (I have already removed 8 and there are another 8 growing now).  It will also mean I have seen its entire life cycle from seed through to clumping in a 3 year period. It will be a shame to loose this first plant though, as it was this one that started all the fuss.

I probably need to start thinking about what to do next; do I leave the plant to see what happens, or top cut it to force more offsets? Who knows it may even continue growing in some weird way once the flowering has finally finished.  I have enough offsets now not to worry about the next generation (although not enough to meet demand) so maybe I should leave it to a natural outcome, something I very rarely do with my plants.

Normally when you get a plant you know what to expect, or can at least look it up.  It has been great fun not knowing what to expect and documenting everything for the very first time. With the next generation all planted out in different locations I am looking forward to learning more as they grow and who knows mum may have one or two more surprises left for me yet.

After a bad Winter, a very good Spring.

This year showed that even the hardiest of aloes struggle with a bad UK winter. So I am always on the look out for aloes that may survive. A few years back I found a cross between the two hardy aloes; a. striatula and a. aristrata. This was it in August of 2009.

I heard that sadly it was not as hardy as either of its parents, but thought I would try anyway. The first winter it went in the cold frame and came through without any problems. Over the summer of 2010 it got very leggy and as the main plant could no longer support its self, I removed the offset for backup, allowing me to test the main plant a bit further.

Typically we had a terrible winter and almost all the plants suffered, so it was no surprise that the main plant did not look great having been left under a simple rain cover.  This was it this morning:

At first glance things do not look good, but actually there are lots of little bits of good news when you look closely:

Yes there are one or two new pups, which given how often I get asked if I have a pup going, will please a lot of people. However it does need cleaning up and checking the main stem I found a bit of rot starting in the middle which had to be removed as soon as possible.  Even without the top, the pups will grow quicker  left where there are for a little while longer.  So it was a simple case of cutting the top off and removing all the lower leaves and fnally checking there was no rot left.

I will leave the top part to stand for a few days to dry off and ensure there is no sign of rot.  I don't really have many tips for growing succulents, but this is one I do use. When potting up top cuts do not water them.  There is a temptation when potting up to water, but resist, leave the plant to settle in for a couple of weeks and then give a little water, increasing each time you water. 

Sadly even though all the plants suffered this winter, I doubt this would survive our normal winters totally unprotected. Although on the plus side,  it will come back strongly from the roots so at least you will have lots of plants to swap for something that may be winter hardy.