Time to cut up some plants.

It has been a summer of two halves weather wise; June & July were lovely and hot, then August arrived and it has been much colder and wetter.  So with wetter weather over the weekend it was time to rectify some of the neglect and get in the greenhouse.  With all the work going on with planting the succulent rockeries everything else has taken a back seat. First job to sort out some of the more unkempt plants.

Some like xGraptosedum 'Medterranean Mystery' have suffered from lack of water and low light. 

A hybrid apparently common in Europe it is a lovely little plant and quite tough.  I am trying one outside unprotected this winter as it is been fine under rain covers before.  As they grow they develop woody stalks and at some point they need to be tidied up. I simply cut all the heads off plant root them and bin the old plant.  It helps to keep them fresh and gives me new plants for swaps. I managed to get three pots like this one, so not going to go short next year.

That type of tidying was more common with the lack of care, here is echeveria corrinea x echeveira rosea before

Another branching hybrid with really god hardiness and flowers.  I really must take better care of it as when well looked after it is stunning.

I decided to leave the top section as one, next year will be the year I finally look after it properly. Then it can take a place in the rockery looking like the plant it should be.

In other cases it is more about getting more plants.  I grew a set of ech. subrigida x ech. peacocki from seed a couple of years ago.  The plants grew into several forms and I have been trying to get more of my favourite forms.

I love the red edges to this form and it has a good pale blue/white colour. Having top cut it last year, the offsets are now big enough to be taken off.

I am getting better at not rushing removing offsets, I'll leave the others until next spring and decide then if I want to grow them as a clump or cut them up as well.

It doesn't always go according to plan.  This is echeveria 'rainbow',

I top cut it last year to encourage offsets, which it did, only not quite as planned.

Yes there are lots of offsets, but all have become almost totally white. Looking at them I can't see any that I think would survive in their own.  I guess this one is staying as it is, while we wait and see what happens next. Hopefully they will develop more green and stems so they can be removed.

White offsets seem to be a trend at the moment.  Here is one of my echeveria 'Compton Carousel', I took all the lower leaves of at the end of last year to encourage offsets.

I like to call these pure white plants "ghosts", with no chlorophyll they will not survive on their own as they can not feed themselves.  It will be interesting to see if they do better as they are growing as branches of a plant.  Normally I top cut the plant and let the offsets take over, this one has been left and instead the three largest normal offsets removed and potted up.

I have so far always resisted selling these, I get asked a lot. Instead all the offsets are used as swaps and presents for friends.  I mentioned in the last post how I dread people turning up to my house with plants.  Strangely I have never had anyone look upset when I turn up with one of these as a little present.