To over-pot or not, that is the question.

A couple of months back I did a post on search for the perfect plant pot. It's not just aesthetics that are important when thinking about keeping succulents though; the most common discussion is terracotta verses plastic. Something I think is as important is the size and shape of the pot as it is another myth that all succulents do fine with restricted root systems. Getting the pot wrong can really slow the plants growth down, which in some cases can be an advantage but not if you are actually wanting your plants to grow.

I have said it before and no doubt I will say it many more times: keeping a close eye on your plants, whether it is watching for signs of pests or disease, their water requirements, how they cope with climate etc, ultimately gives you much healthier plants. There are plants that like to be pot bound, those that need deep pots, and those that need as much root space as possible. Ultimately it would be great if this information was available in books or online, but until then you often have to learn through trial and error. I have found with my plants that yuccas like deeper pots, agaves don't mind being pot bound in full or half depth pots, aloes respond to over-potting and echeverias there is no hard and fast rule. But there are always exceptions to this.  Agave montana for instance like to have root space and grow much quicker in the ground than in pots. This may be as much due to their requirements for more water than most agaves and bigger pots dry out much slower. The plant in the photo is now almost twice the size of a second plant bought at the same time but kept in a pot.

With aloes I tend to start by putting them into one of three groups.  The tree and very large aloes like aloe plicatilis or aloe speciosa need plenty of root space.  The large rosette style vary the most; aloe saponaria likes big pots, while aloe zebrina and aloe striata cope with restricted root growth. Then the small and new hybrids like aloe snowflake and the Kelly Griffin hybrids tend to be fine in the half height pots.  One sign they may respond to over-potting is to look at the roots when you re-pot. The photo on the right shows the roots of an aloe mawii that despite being re-potted in April was already showing roots though the bottom of the pot.  This weekend I took the plant out of its pot to have a look, the pot was already almost totally roots. I re-potted it into a much bigger pot as a test.

 Whenever I over-pot a plant I always watch it closely to see if I notice any quicker growth.  There is a line between providing space for root growth and ending up with root growth at the expensive of top growth. So I'll keep a close eye on the aloe mawii for the next year or so to check that it does indeed grow quicker. Now it is in a nice pot I can also keep it out as a feature. It took me a long time to track down having seen photos of adult plants and the unusual flowers that stick out horizontally from the plant.. I am looking forward to seeing how it develops.  This is one you can stress and in low water / bright sun conditions it turns an lovely red colour. Right now it is one of my favourite aloes so I wont mind giving it pride of place for a bit.

Apart from speed of growth the other area where pot size may make a difference is in producing offsets.  There are some people that think that restricting root space means plants produce more pups,  others say over-potting encourages it. For me the jury is still out; I have plants that pup profusely and others that don't pup at all and I am a long way from being able to say how pot size effects this.  The only way pot size effects pups for me is in easy of removing and spacing.  But as I tend to remove pups at the start of each spring when I re-pot this doesn't make much difference. I would love to hear if anyone has noticed anything one way or another.

Of course water and climate usually have a far bigger effect on the speed of growth than pot size.  But in the UK where we don't have the very hot summer, or intense sun light every little bit helps.

Red means danger

I have commented before that the colour of aloes and echeverias can be altered by controlling the amount of sun and water. Plants like echeveria 'Big Red' need lots of sun to go a good red colour.

While others like aloe purple flush need to be kept overly dry to get the best colour.

Either way colour is something we try to induce in some succulents. Today I was reminded that sometimes colour in succulents is not good and can be a warning of something not being right with the plant.

One of my favourite agaves is a. filfera x isthmensis.  It is a lovely little cross and has grown well since I got it a couple of years back.  Normally it lives on the windowsill in my shed (my substitute green house), this year though it has been outside with the rest of the agaves.

I had noticed that at some point it had gone red, and given that many plants do this when you move them out into the sun for the first time I did not think much about it at the time.  Looking around this weekend it was still red which I thought was a little strange, although the latest leaves were going back to green. I posted this on a forum and was reminded that red leaves in agaves is often a sign of root damage.  So today I took it out of the pot to have a look and sure enough the majority of the roots were dead with only 2 or 3 new healthy roots. As there was no sign or rot, the roots were cleaned up and the plant repotted and moved back into the shed and a bit less sun. The good thing is that the new roots are healthy and the new leaves seem to be growing fine, so no long term damage.  It is reminder of the signs succulents can give that everything is not well.

I had heard about the colour issue before; in relation to offsets.  If you take an offset of an agave and it has minimal or no roots, one of the worst things you can do is to put it in the sun.  They should be in a nice shady spot while they develop their roots and ability to take in water.  Too much sun will turn the plant red in the same way, warning you that it needs to be moved.

It is far better to catch a problem early than to have to nurse the plant back to health once things have got much worse. With problems with the roots, they are difficult to spot, unless you happen to be repotting the plant anyway. So watching out for changes in colour in agaves, is a good one to remember.

Sitting out with a drink and the parakeets

The good weather continues and it actually feels like summer, after the wet July.  So we took the opportunity to sit out and enjoy the evening in the almost finished seating area. The seat is in, the decking waxed and who would of guessed one or two pots may have migrated to the area as well.

There are still a few bits to finish off, and I have to re-lay or seed the lawn in places, but it is finally getting there. The pots on the flower bed are only temporary while I wait for the holders that I can attache to the posts and trellis. Funnily enough, if we hadn't decided to move the original idea included converting that bed into a raised succulent bed  to allow most of the plants to be planted. So it is good to see them there, even if it is only for a short time. 

Living where I do in South West London, we have the pleasure of flocks of parakeets.  No one is sure where they came from, but there are now thousands of them living wild in the local parks and in fact there are so many they are considered a pest.  No matter how you view them,  there is no ignoring them. Sitting out on a summers evening you see flocks flying home to roost and it's still a sight I enjoy, even if it is a noisy one.

Photo by miacat63, and is much better than any I have.

They are a lot prettier than pigeons!

A long standing project

I don't post much about my the non spiky parts of my garden. This is partly due to my spiky focus and partly due to the fact that it is not worth posting about. This weekend I finally got around to trying to finish off a seating area that has been an ongoing project for years.  My garden is a very odd shape; being an end plot in an  A shaped estate, it is a triangle.  So not only is it not very long (only 12m) but is is also half the size of a normal rectangular garden the same length. This means the bottom third of the garden is very narrow and it was basically a  choice between making it one large plant bed, or using it for something else.

My OH and I are both big fans of Morocco and so we thought it would make a good inspiration for a seating area.  A few years back I built a walled area, with a raised bed and two seats.  I found this photo which shows the areas and the rest of the garden.

The garden has changed a lot since then, not least the slow change from more fluffy plants to my spiky friends. One thing that hasn't changed is that neither of the gardens either side are used. You can imagine my thoughts as I look at these long gardens, both rectangular, and only left unloved.

Anyway the original idea for the seating area,  was to tile the walls and floor using bright coloured tiles and to build a pergola over the top from which we could hang a sail or tent to provide shade. The pergola went up last year, but we were still struggling to find decent tiles for the rest.  As well as tiling the floor of the actual seating area, we needed to do a path into it.  The narrow part of the grass has been destroyed by our dog, who charges up and down this bit to defend her territory. Here it was a few months back, looking at its all time worst.

It was now obvious the area needed to be sorted, but at the same time we have decided to move. Knowing we are going to sell the house, made me think that I would probably have to re-do the garden to make it more suitable; for a start I was going to have to dig up the dry bed and replace all my prized plants with something anyone can care for.  Plus I am not leaving them behind when I move, no doubt  this will be the topic of a future post. So I have been slowly working my way around the back replanting the beds in a way that hopefully will be good for the future residents.

Part of this re-vamp has been to decide what to do with the seating area. I needed to come up with a cheaper way of finishing it, as the tiles were now not going to happen.  So in the end with the limited budget we decided to deck the area and that's what I spent the weekend doing.

I had hoped to have the decking finished and the seat put back in again. It was all going so well until we got to three boards from the end.  There I was thinking I had planned it perfectly,  the offcuts were the perfect length to finish the job, until we went to measure the 3rd from last board and found it was 2cm to short!  Looking around I realized that was it, we could put the other boards in place but would have to return to the shop to get one more board and couldn't do that until next week. 

While it was a shame not to finish, at least most of the work has been done.  I used the rest of the time  to start the edging that will run the whole way around the flowerbeds and to clear the last bed ready for planting.

The cycad is another one of my prize plants.  It is about half way through its latest flush, so can't be moved until the leaves harden.  Once that has happened, the pot will be moved so that last bit of bed can be planted up.  I also have to re-seed the top part of the lawn, to get it back into shape, hopefully stopping the dog from ruining it again.

While the new planting may not be spiky, I will make the most of the posts and batons on the fence to hang pots from.  With all that extra space I may be able to move the pots off the raised bed I posted about earlier.  I know one person that would be very happy if there were no pots perched on walls ready to be knocked off!.

Late flowering echeverias

There is a common view that echeverias are only spring / early summer flowerers. I am guessing this tends to be because the most available forms mainly flower early.  There are however echeverias for all seasons and right now the second wave of plants are flowering away.  The mid-summer varieties are often the blue forms (I did a post on them back in May), These are three of the best coloured varieties, from left to right: e. subsessilis, e. john catlin and e. peacockii.

It can be hard to show the flowers as they can get very octopus like. The other common factor of the blue varieties are the types of flower as they are all of the shepherds crook form. You can see why on this photo of e. peacockii.

Then as these ones past their best the next batch will just be starting. I hope to have at least one form in flower for 10 months of the year (although the winter ones need some protection in the UK). Maybe it would make a good future post to do the complete year in echeveria flowers for anyone who wants to find a variety that flowers at any particular point. So no more using the "they only flower in Spring" excuse for not owning lots!

Is there such a thing as too low maintenance?

It is often mentioned how succulent gardens are low maintenance and there is no doubt that this can be true.  With my dry bed the sole work is cutting off flower stalks and picking up leaves that blow in from other gardens. That's it; no pruning,  no digging in organic material, weeding, watering or any of the other stuff you normally associate with gardening.  In fact I sometimes wonder if it has gone too far in its lack of requirements; I am obsolete, it can survive and look good if I am there or not. 

Is this a case of  "be careful what you wish for" ? After all I always wanted a garden that looked good all year but didn't need much care, allowing me to just sit back and enjoy it. I thought this was the ideal garden, no real work,  just lots of enjoying. So I got what I wanted. As many of you will know, the real joy of gardens is not just sitting in them but getting your hands dirty, getting in among the plants. So what to do in a garden that needs no care? I ensure my plants look their best, removing ANY dead leaves, make sure the gravel is all tidy, check for bugs and basically anything else that keeps me in among the plants.  Sadly that doesn't keep me busy for long so I resort to my pots which ultimately ends up in propagating more plants.

One echeveria that kept me busy for a little bit today was e. carnicolor.  I posted this picture of it earlier in the year.

The flowers have finished and I hadn't bothered removing them. They have taken on a life of their own and the plants are a mess. 

I have mentioned before that if you leave echeveria flower stalks then new plants will form and this one has taken it too the extreme.

So cleaned the plants up and re-potted them, strangely into a smaller pot as they had too much space. They looked much better afterwards and can be put out in public again.

In a month or so the young plants will have filled out to nicely to fill the pot and no doubt it will be even more of a medusa when it flowers next year. I couldn't resist tidying up a few of the flower stalks:

Most of these will be given away, but I am wondering if I can't do something with one of the stems. Maybe another one to try to bonsai, it's a good colour, has a good structure (it you don't let it run wild) so may look good as a miniature.

So while the dry bed may be no maintenance at least the pots give me something to do.

Planting: part 2

Having got part way through the planting on Sunday, I thought it best to carry on can get it all finished. So to recap; so far the bottom third of the picture is planted up with agave parryi cream spike, graptosedum 'Mediterranean Mystery' , and a saxifage. Next in were a few sempervivum ciliosum and a small agave utahensis.

This was about the half ay mark and I was starting to worry I would not have enough plants, so it was time to raid the dry bed for some echeveria elegans.

That didn't take us as much space as I hoped so back to the sempervivums, this time s. lively bug, but again running out of plants, so time to cut up a nice little sedeveria lutescens. The name is almost right,  but I can never find it referanced anywhere, another for my list of names to be confirmed. Anyway it is a nice plant, that has pretty white flowers in spring.

Really on the home stretch now just one little space to fill.  Back out to the dry bed for a bit of inspiration and I spotted this lovely plant that I suspect is a graptopetalum or one of the crosses.  As it has been bone hardy for me I thought it had earned the last spot, so in it went.  That was it, all planted up (although no doubt I will add a few more saxifrages to help it fill out quicker)  and I am really pleased with it

One of the things I like about it, is it is surprisingly 3D,  as it sat on the table it looked like a proper mini landscape.

I will leave it flat for the rest of July to give it time to settle in and the plants to take root properly.  Then slowly move it up to vertical, probably increasing the angle a bit every few days.  It has been fun putting it together and I will enjoy watching it fill out.

So how many plants did it take, well here is the full list: 1 x agave paryyi cream spike, 1 x agave utahensis, 2 graptosedum 'Mediterranean Mystery' , 3 x sedeveria lutescens, 6 x echeveria elegans, 3 x unknown graptopetalum, 8 x sempervivum virgils, 20 x sempervivum lively bug, 26 x sempervivum ciliosum and 145 saxifrages. So by my reckoning that's 225 plants, admittedly the saxifrages are a bit of a cheat, as it was 5 plants cut up,  but as I had to plant each bit using my faithful needle nose tweezers I feel justified in counting them as individual plants!

Overall I am really happy, but sitting back, looking at it I noticed the pile of pots still full of plants. I realised I hadn't used the 15 echeverias FO-48 I had propped especially for the picture.  I guess that explains why my collection of plants in pots never gets smaller. Anyone want a not hardy echeveria offset?