It's too early

For everything to be in flower but it has been such a good and sunny start to the year that all the echeverias are way ahead of where they should be.  Looking around the shed today it is a mass of flowers, not just the spring but early summer flowering varieties.  Normally at this time of year it would just the the echeveria roseas in flower like these, with varieties like e. agavoides just starting to show their flower stalks.

The dry bed is well and truly waking up.  There are signs the agaves are starting to get into growth, but this time of year really belongs to the alpines.  On my wish list of things for a new garden I have: more space, a greenhouse, a south facing slope and a stone wall for alpines. It would be a dry stone wall where every crevice has some interesting little plant to catch your attention. One group of plants that would feature are saxifragaceae. There are so many varieties, the ones I like are the tight clump forming ones.  I have a few in flower at the moment, although they don't look as good in the ground as stuck to a wall.

Thankfully they don't all have yellow flowers, the next one does, but I love the shape of the clump.

Finally a different flower type

This one is so small it tends to go unnoticed in the dry bed for most of the year.  Another good reason for my alpine wall.  If I ever get my wish, part of the fun will be searching for lots of other varieties to complement the few that I currently have.

Emergency surgery

They say you never forget your first love, I think the same goes for those first plants you lust after. I know it is true for me, certain plants in my collection have a special place. Once such plant is this aloe zebrina. It was my second year of more serious succulent collecting  and most of my plants especially my aloes were small seedlings. Then a friend phoned to say that he had just been to a local nursery with a green house full of agaves and aloes. It was too tempting to miss and needless to say when I saw this aloe I knew it had to come home with me (especially as it was a bargain price)

It looked glorious all summer and then autumn arrived, and I suddenly wondered where on earth I was going to store it.  It was too big for the house and the shed, the only option was to build a cold frame and hope it would cope with some harsh treatment.  It did, flowering again next spring which confirmed that many aloes are tougher than we give them credit for.  The next three years were all fine, flowers every spring and looking great all summer.  Then we had the winter of 2010/11 and for the first time it was damaged.  I had got so used to it getting through winters without problems,  that i didn't think much of the damage as it seemed to be growing again.

Then last weekend I found this. All the lower leaves are dead and the plant is only being supported by the cold frame.  It was one of those horrible moments when you reach towards the plant, hoping for the best but knowing perfect well what you are going to find.  I felt under the leaves and sure enough the trunk was soft. Having been caught out once I couldn't leave it again and giving it a gentle tug, the top came away in my hand. 

The trunk had obviously rooted last winter, but the surprise was the roots that had grown through the rot to allow the plant to keep going.

Sadly the rot would only continue if left unchecked, so I had to remove all the dead leaves and get back to health trunk. I had to remove a lot, but finally I got back to good health stem.

Not quite the large, dramatic plant it was a couple of summers back.

What is left has been placed on a wire rack while the base dries off.  in a couple of weeks, if it warms up, I will place it in very light soil, on heat and leave it for another couple of week.  Then i will start to water it, adding a bit more each week.  If everything goes according to plan, it will be well rooted by the end of summer.

I hope it will forgive me for my shocking treatment.  Hopefully this will be the last winter I have limited winter storage space and they will have less of a fight to stay alive from now on.

Tracking progess

Every spring and autumn I take photos of a lot of my plants to see how they are growing. Then on quiet evenings I can look through them to see how things have grown. Variegates work well for this as you can really see the plant come into its own. Some of my favourite series are the experiments or plants that I am shaping. This is echeveria secunda brevifolia, I have posted about it before, as I was trying to shape it into a little tree.  This was it in March 2010:

 

Then a year later in March 2011, it has filled out nicely:

And finally Last week:

I really like the new plants forming underneath the original growth.  I am now tempted to cut the outside ring off to expose the dome below.  Then again I may leave it and see what happens, after all I can always cut hem off later if leaving doesn't work out.

Not what I was expecting

One of my main rituals in spring and again in autumn is looking through the pots at what has offset.  Every now and then something will surprise you and looking around over the weekend I found these. Not the offsets I was expecting:

That is definitely not a cactus!

Neither is that one.  There are two possible explanations; either they were sat next to a plant that set seed, or I re-used the soil from a pot I was using for seeds. Either way it is unlikely I will ever figure out what the plants are.  I am guessing they are echeverias (given those are the only succulents I grow that produce seedlings like that) and that is about as far as I will get.

Whatever the explanation, it's not bad considering these pots have been in my coldest mini green house all winter.  To have germinated in the cold and be growing without any signs of damage should produce nice hardy plants.

New green house

A green house is fairly close to the top of my wish list for my next house. So it was a lovely surprise when my sister in law got me one for my birthday

It has very intricate metal panels.

All put together it is very grand

What to put in it?  I am thinking either a dwarf echeveria, or a tilandsia.

Now I just need the full sized version.

Could it be?

This winter has been exceptionally mild ... so far. We have had one cold spell earlier this month and that is it ... so far. It almost doesn't feel like we have had a winter... so far. The last couple of days, have almost matched the hottest February day on record and it feels like spring.  Surely this is good, but it has got me all confused.  The plants all seem to think that is it,  the echeverias are flowering earlier than I have ever seen them. This is echeveria ramillet which still has its water stressed red colour but its flowers are out.

Some of them look better than ever, which is great news at the start of the growing season, this little e. painted thrills hasn't lost anything from last summer and has a couple of offsets forming so is going to need a re-pot.

I love this e. recurvata, it has gone an almost purple colour with all the sun and lack of water.  Can't wait to see the flowers as it is a first for me.

You may have guessed I spent some time outside today doing a quick plant check.  It looks like I am going to have a very busy spring... when it arrives.  Everything needs potting up and if I was lacking space before it is going to much worse when everything is in larger pots. But that is for spring... when it arrives. In the mean time, the plants in the cold frame all survived (well all except for 2 small offsets).  I would normally expect to loose some of the trail plants, or spares, or plants that are simply too small or I didn't have space to give proper protection to.

So what's the problem, no looses, healthy growing plants, the urge to go out plant shopping. You are probably thinking everything is good in the world and from my obsession point of view you are right.  I can feel that rush as I look through on-line sales pages and it takes all my restraint not to click on that tempting Add to cart button. The problem of course is that while I am obsessed my poor OH is not. Normally I can point to all the dead plants (usually spares) as I carry them through the house and say it is one in one out.  This year I can't do that and while I have considered killing some unwanted plants, or looking for dead plants in neighbours gardens and sneaking them in, something tells me she would catch on. It seems if I am going to get my much needed new plants I am going to have to get creative with my ways of sneaking them in.  Not posting here would probably be a good start!

Of course all this may be premature, as the big issue and what is getting me so confused. Is that while it may feel like spring, it is only the end of February and in the  UK the weather seems to has a nasty way of holding something back. So while I figure out ways to sneak plants pasted my OH, I will keep a close eye on the weather forecasts in the hope that this year spring really has started in February.

A forced re-pot

A quick update on the echeveria seedlings I posted about here.  The e. agavoides ebony have not grown much as would be expected in winter.  The e. subrigida x peacockii on the other hand have grown at an alarming rate. So much so that the two largest were forcing out the other seedlings. Normally I would avoid doing any re-potting in winter, but in this case there was a chance that leaving them would ruin the plants, so I made an exception and potted them up. These are the two biggest

They are turning into lovely plants and should be a decent size by the end of summer.  The pale one is still going, but is much slower.  The comments from friends suggest there will be no shortage of takers once I decide how many spares I want to get rid of.