It's back to winter and shopping

The last post was all about things warming up and starting to get the plants out of the greenhouse.  Then this week it is back to winter again and all the plants are back inside again.  Such is the joy of UK springs.

Thankfully this weekend was the first cactus mart of the year, so time for a quick trip to the Kent coast with another succulent fan. Some chapters of the British Cactus and Succulent Society hold these sales every year, and the main sellers turn up to kick their year off in style.  The trick is to arrive before they open to ensure you are at the front of the line, that way you stand more chance of picking up that one rare plant someone has brought along. Saturday was no exception and the place was packed so it was pretty much impossible to take photos while there.  Instead just some pictures of the purchases.

It is strange that there are always one or two plants that everyone has, then next year you can't find them anywhere.  This year in the succulents it was the echeveria agavoides forms that were found on every stand. You were lucky if there was one echeveria ebony in previous years, then this year not only did everyone have them, but there were hybrids, and different forms.

This one was just labelled as a cross, so we'll see how it turns out. Then there were lots of other agavoides forms including: bordeaux, red leaf, red edge, Taurus, etc. I'm torn about all the different names to the red ones, especially when they are small, but they seemed to be the plant of the show. Next year it will be something else.

There are always a few new aloes, usually from the KG stable.  I stopped buying them a few years back but thought this one was a little different, so aloe gargoyle made it into my basket.

Recently I have been adding gasteraloes as they seem to been quite cold hardy for me. You often find gasteraloe flow at these sales but no others, One of the sellers had two different ones and no one else seemed interested so I snapped them up.  First up gasteraloe de Tige.

The second is gasteraloe d' due

Much greener and slimmer leaves on this one.  I can't find the name online anywhere so not sure if it is correct or not. Both had 3 or 4 pups, so those were removed and potted up ready for trades.

The other group of plants that has been sneaking in to my greenhouse are the haworthias.  There are always a lot of haworthias at these sales, it is one of the larger groups of succulents. I tend to like either the compact forms, so limited myself to two haworthia parksiana, one normal form and one hybrid (shown below)

Then the agaves, more have been sneaking into sales in recent years, but here there were very few and they were almost all americana or something common.  There was however one that stood out, agave shrevei ssp. magna.

It has really dark almost black terminal spines and a great leaf shape.  Looking forward to seeing it develop. It's not hardy for me, but should be ok if kept dry, so a pot one, which will also help limit its size.

I didn't manage to get the main plant I was after; an aloe erincaea. No one had them this year, having been one of the big plants last year. I already have a nice one I want to top cut, which should work, but just in case I want to find a reserve. Apart from that quite a successful day and a good way to take my mind of the return to cold weather.

Another ceramic pot experiment

I am sure many of us are constantly on the look out for unusal plant pots for our succulents. Back in January, just happened to pop into a shop and found this one.

It really reminded me of a clump of sea anemones.

Back home and time to think what to plant in it. The planting holes are not large, and potting was going to be difficult. So slow growing and perhaps something that could just be planted and left to get on with it. Mulling over ideas my pot of deuterocohnia brevifolia came to mind. This little bromilaid, also known as Abromeitiella brevifolia f. chlorantha, forms nice mounds over time. My pot had put on a growth spurt over last summer and was looking good.

Wouldn't it be amazing to have each hole planted with these; over time they would envelop the pot forming a multitude of little mounds.  I considered splitting mine, but it was too perfect, so one project led to another and a second pot was purchases.

Doesn't it look good in its new home, It is bigger than it looks, the pot is 22cm.  

Now just the problem of finding another plant with enough heads to fill the 20 holes.  It took a while to track down a large enough plant, and it arrived yesterday.  It was straight down to seeing how many plants with roots it could be split into.

6 good plants straight away. A few more delicate splits, some with roots and some without, resulted in 14 plants.  Next job to decide which holes to fill.  I though it would look better initially to leave some empty, to allow watering and to give something different while the plants establish.

It took quite a few attempts to settle on this one. Then time to fill it, and the realisation that this was a really stupid idea. The holes were between 1 - 2cm and with a plant, many with root, getting soil in was going to be difficult.  How any times in succulent gardening do we use unusual tools.  Todays a teaspoon.

It took about 30 minutes to spoon the soil mix into the holes, shaking the whole thing to get it spred evening through the pot.  Another 15 minutes to top it up around the plants.   The the real fun started; how to get the gravel around the base of each plant.  I tried the teaspoon, my hand and finally resorted to a pair of tweezers and placing 2 or 3 small pieces of gravel at a time.  Yep 1.5 hours later and the pot was finished!

Should be fun as it fills out, initially forming individual mounds and then as these join together into one amorphous blob. It was a lot more work than expected, but should be worth it.

Wheeling out the first pots

To free up some space int eh greenhouse, or more correctly to move the pots that were on the floor stoping access, the first pots have been moved out. Nothing sensitive at the moment, so it ia mainly the echeveria agavoides forms.

From left to right: bordeaux, ebony, red edge and finally my seed grown ebony without coloured tips. They have really taken to their pots. I'm planning on taking the offsets off these to keep them as single plants, there are other pots with clumps in.

One of the other pots, is the Tonka truck.

To think i spent years trying to grow this orostachys spinosa, loosing it every winter as I thought it as a hardy alpine. Simply moving it under cover over winter was all it needed.  Now I have a truck full.

Shifting from winter to summer

This weekend was another sunny one, so time to start unpacking the greenhouse and uncovering the succulent rockery.  It is a little earlier than I usually do this and still a little risky, but with no work trips in the next month I can move things back if any heavy frosts are forcast.

The succueltn rockery is planted to be hardy for London winters, this means the covers are more to keep the plants in top condition.  It therefore doesn't take long to take the two long vegetable cloches off.

There doesn't seem to have been any damage and if this summer is anything like last the growth will be amazing with such an early start. Most of the plants are well known to be hardy, like the yuccas, agaves and aloe polyphylla.

I was looking at the agave parryi hk1684 and like everything it has grown so much since being planted.  This has to be my favourite form.

Then you have the odd test plant.  In the Uk gastroaloes are becoming more common. These seem to be quite hardy and even in last cold winter they were all fine in my greenhouse so last summer one was planted out as a test, gasteria armstongii x aloe aristata.  It sailed through without problems.

There are a few major changes planned for the rockery this year.  Things have grown much quicker than expected and some of the plants have got too big, or just don't work in their locations.  So hopefully will have some good updates on the changes as we get into summer.

Plants are waking up

It's that time of year again, alternating between the joy of plants waking up and the fear of them rotting. The UK has had a very mild winter so hopefully this will reduce the amount of end of winter damage.  We just need spring to be not too wet and just for once to move smoothly from winter - spring - summer.

Anyway it's time to start waking the plants up and getting back into the garden and greenhouse.  This is about checking how the plants have done, removing any signs of rot and checking for bugs.  The greenhouse is looking good.

The manfreda / mangave bench is looking the best it ever has. I kept a closer eye on these this year having learnt that they do not like to totally dry out even over winter.  This made a big difference and even the small manfreda guttata offsets that I removed at the end of last summer, are not looking bad.  The mangave fans may spot some surprises / future posts in there.

The echeveria agavoides 'ebony' in the black bowl has formed a really good shape. It's lost some of the colour as expected, but will colour up as soon as it can be moved outside.  The large bowl is more established.

This year they seem to have held their colour much better than previous years.  Hopefully this will mean an even darker colour when they go back into their summer spot.  The bowl is now full, so it's going to be interesting to see what happens as they start to push up against each other.

It's good to be back in the greenhouse again and thinking about projects for the year. Lots in the pipeline, so hopefully we'll have a good summer.

Close but not quite there

I often have to travel to Africa for work, which should be perfect for the plant addiction. Sadly between the location and pressures on time it never quite gives the tourist or plant opportunities. The latest trip was to The Gambia which was strange for several reasons; firstly two other people were going as well (I have always been on my own before) and the research centre was right next to a beach.

The flight was actually the highlights scenery wise. Flying over desert is usually pretty spectacular if you happen to be looking out of the window.

The flights meant there was time for a quick trip to the beach.

There is a list of plants I dream of seeing in habitat, mainly aloes. One that is right up there are the ancient boabab trees.  For me these are one of the iconic views of Africa. So I was a little surprised to find this walking around the office.

I managed to track down someone who knew that it was planted shortly after the research centre opened. It should be there for generations of researchers to enjoy.   Even at this size there was something special about it.

Boabab juice is a stapple for locals and it was fruiting season. After a couple of days I started to notice trees and fruits all over the place. Sadly they are not the massive 1000 year old trees you see in photos. I didn't get out of the capital so it was hardly a representative sample.

Some of the more touristy places make the most of their trees.

I'm guessing that as these mature the floor of the tree house is not going be quite as flat. Mind you that will probaly not be for a hundred years or two.

While it was great to see my first boababs, these are not quite the specimens I dreamt of. So can't cross that one off the list quite yet.

Can finally cross one off the wish list

We all have those elusive plants, that torment you from a far. One of mine, was agave titanota black and blue.  Always loved the various titanota forms (true and false).  A blue form, with very dark almost black teeth was going to make it to the wish list.

After a few years it has finally arrived in Europe in larger numbers.  When a little one turns up, you have to go for it.

It may be a while before it reaches it's full potential.