And so it begins

With a constant stream of people coming through the house, I used a break in the viewings to start dismantling the dry bed.  The agave section is the first to go, this was it this morning.

I thought it was best to start with the smallest plants first and work up.  This lot came out in about 1 hour, being planted in almost pure gravel makes removing them really easy. There was one pup from each of the agave parryi, you can clearly see the difference in colour and shape now, they looked almost identical when planted.

The bed is already looking much emptier. I'll do the rest of the agaves, the filifera, nigra and montana next and then I will have all the space I need to take care as I dig out the yuccas.

Given how much time it took to design, build and plant up, not to mention the time I have spent protecting it and removing leaves, I have mixed feelings about the speed with which it is can be dismantled.

The ugly duckling

There once was a little echeveria hybrid who felt very unloved compared to the other hybrids.  It wasn't its fault it didn't turn out as pretty as the others, after all you can't choose your parents. For years it was considered a poor echeveria agavoides hybrid while the other hybrids were pampered, named and given pride of place. The only bit of attention it was given was to humiliate it in a post here highlighting how plain it was.  Come winter it was put storage, tucked away at the back, out of sight and out of mind.

Come spring waking up, it tentatively put out its first flower spike.  Quietly not wanting to attract attention it opened its first flower hidden among the other plants.

Then something amazing happened, it noticed that the flower was being photographed and assumed that again it was to be humiliated. But it wasn't

Slowly it built in confidence and put out more flowers and with each flower it got more attention.  No one seemed to be laughing, instead the comments were about how good it looked.

Finally it was able to take pride of place. Its flowers the best on display, not at all like the lack lustre flowers of its parents.

Gone are the plain leaves, the loose shape, replaced by thick, pale blue leaves a nice round rosette and those lovely large flowers.

The ugly duckling was ugly no more.

Shed in flower

Looks like you cannot fight nature and with all the sun and warm weather we had in March everything has come into flower early this year in the shed.  Given that most echeveria flowers are yellow, the flowers are not exactly a techni-colour display. That is before you add the plants themselves still in their winter colours. Put the two together and you do get a feast for your eyes.

I love the different shapes of the flower spikes; the branched, the straight and the shepherds crook. Some go a little mad at this time of year and will need a good hack back once the flowers are over.

Some are just delicate, the graptopetalums have some of the best flowers.

Wherever you look there are flowers weaving between the other plants.

There is so much in flower I have no chance of controlling crosses, so it is down to nature this year and we shall see what it can do.

Planting up the greenhouse

I felt it was time to plant up the greenhouse .  There were a few choices for plants, in the end I opted for a cute little cactus. 

Echeveria seedlings

After a recent comment asking about the echeveria agavoides 'ebony' seedlings I thought it was time for an update, especially given the growth. I potted up to of the e. subrigida x peacockii seedlings earlier in the year and you can see the difference that has made in their growth.  Who says that succulents don't respond to pampering.

First up was to pot up the remaining e. subrigida x peacockii seedlings.  There is still really good variation in the colour of these from plain green to a very pale blue / white. I hope this continues as I will then be able to select the best ones and pass the the rest off to friends (or the highest bidders). 

The e. agavoides 'ebony' have been much slower.  I find this is typical of the variety, they seem to take a long time to get to a certain size and then suddenly get going.  I would expect them to stay small this year and then properly put on good growth next summer. Although if we actually have a summer that may be different and they have got a good head-start now they are all planted up.

Both of these should be very collectable once they have grown a bit.  I am sure my OH will be looking at them think "a little bit of extra cash", I will probably look at them and think "swaps anyone"?

It had to happen

It's official we are moving and so the dry bed is going to have to be dug up.  It is funny when people come to look at the house apparently there are as many comments about the garden as the house.  There are the ones who think it is great and those that ask if it is going as the plants do not look child friendly. Whatever others think it is strange to think back to what it was like before:

Even back then there were signs of my addiction with pots full of agaves and I think it was the thought of having less plants in pots that persuaded my OH to let me dig up the concrete. Not sure it worked quite like that in the end, although at least the front bed has developed every year and she actually enjoys looking out onto it.

Now I just need to dig it all up! The agaves and yuccas are going to be first, some of these have got quite large now and this section of the bed is probably my favourite.

One has to be the agave montana, they love having their feet in the ground and is almost twice the size of the one kept in a pot. 

At this size it copes with our winters without any problems, only needing a little protection to keep snow out of the crown.  It is a good one for the UK as it grows best when slightly colder and wetter which is perfect for those UK summers. I will be interested to see how far the roots stretch on this one. Also in this bed are two agave filiferas, two agave parryis (plus a few pups), an agave x nigra and a few little ones. The large yucca rostratas are going to be interesting as well.  They are famous for dropping their roots as the first sign of disturbance.  Hopefully being in gravel will allow them to be dug up with minimal disturbance.

There are agaves in other parts of the bed as well, this agave bracteosa holds court at the front,

While this agave gentryi is hidden away in almost shade.

As I am not sure how long it will be before I can replant them, they will be put into pots and grown under the assumption that they will still be in pots over winter.  That way in the worst case of not having their new home ready in time they should be easy to manage over winter.  This will work fine for most of the plants, the problem plant is going to be eremurus stenophyllus. You may remember this post about the plant last year. It is starting to appear again and I don't have time to leave it to flower. 

I have no idea when the best time to dig it up will be, should I do it sooner or leave it as late as possible? If anyone reading this knows please let me know, it will be a great help.

So that's what is going to be keeping me busy for the next few weekends. It will all be worth it for a larger garden, space for a green house and of course the fun of being able to design something from scratch again. Or lets hope so anyway.

The road to recovery.

A few weeks back I posted about my poor aloe zebrina that needed to be top cut after damage (the post can be found here). I finished with this picture of the top cut, which I rested on some gravel to dry off.

The top cut has been resting in the gravel since then and looking today it has started to root nicely.

Normally I would expect the roots to form around the edge, but these are coming in a very neat circle through the middle.  The next stage is to get it settled into soil.   I want to encourage the roots to grow down, so I gently rested the base on the soil and then filled a little more.

Finally I added a layer of gravel around this to keep it stable.  The idea at this stage is to encourage as many roots as possible and not worry about the plant depth. Once it is established and showing signs of proper growth it will be re-potted much deeper to give a much more stable plant. As always, it will be put somewhere out of the sun and warm to protect it during the next few weeks.

This one is well on the way to recovery and hopefully will back on form again by the end of the summer.