Baby, it's (getting) cold(er) outside...

In the last instalment, I talked about hijacking part of my wife's cold frame as I was concerned about my plants' wellbeing, partly down to occasional rainfall, but mostly due to overnight temperatures.  That was back in November, and since then, temperatures have continued to drop.  In late December / early January we were getting down to -3°C or -4°C on a regular basis, and barely scraping above freezing during the day.

Overnight wasn't too bad, as I could put fleece over the plants, which all have a bubblewrap 'coat' (1) round their pot but during the day I like to get the plants out, to expose them to as much light and fresh air as possible.  However, when it's freezing, that didn't seem like a good idea, so with no greenhouse available, and bringing the plants indoors not a viable option, I looked around for what I might do do raise the temperature in the cold frame.

Most 'heating solutions' seemed to be aimed at larger, greenhouse sized spaces (which is understandable) and either needed an electrical outlet to run some kind of radiator, or used a gas bottle as a fuel source for a burner.  For the top shelf of a wooden cold frame, that measures about 18" x 36", that was the very definition of overkill.  I was trying to stop the plants from freezing, not send them on a Caribbean holiday / burn the house down.

But more digging on the interweb came up with some more practical, homebrew style solutions.  Several involved painting a water bottle, a brick or something of that ilk black, the idea being that it would take in heat during the day and slowly release it overnight.  This only works, however, when there's a bit of heat in the day to start with. 

Others involved putting a passive heat source, such as a hot water bottle, in the frame.  Another common suggestion was to put a box, or pile, of compost in.  Then, as nature takes its course and breaks down the plant matter, a surprisingly large amount of heat is generated.  These are all great ideas but do, unfortunately, take up a fair bit of space, which I am sadly lacking.

Then I found a neat trick which seemed practical and, crucially, small enough to do the job.

A ceramic dish, a couple of flowerpots and a tea light!

To the garden centre!

Half and hour, and about £5.50 later (plus a rummage through my wallet) and I had all the components I needed.

Two pots, one plate, a tea light and £3.27

Light the candle and invert the first pot...

Et voila!  A mini radiator!

Essentially you place a tea light in the middle of the plate, light it and then invert a small flowerpot over the top.  A second, larger pot is then placed over the first and it's gradually heated up and acts like a small radiator.

Some trial and error on the kitchen table led to lifting both pots up on small stacks of coins (2) to improve the airflow and hey presto!

I find a regular tea light candle (which I was pinching from my wife's stash) was lasting about four hours, but a quick trawl on the internet turned up a box of 100, which burn for eight hours each, for about £10, so that will see me through to Spring, with a bit of luck.

If you're tempted to give it a try, then all the usual caveats apply - make sure it's safe, check on it regularly, don't go out and leave it unattended and all that good stuff - but with a few sensible precautions, it's a simple and effective way of keeping a small space from freezing.

I can't find the original website where I found the idea, but whoever the lady was, whose ideas I shamelessly stole - thank you! 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1)  With the appropriate drainage holes!

(2)  There's probably a much better solution to this - I shall investigate.

I got chills, they're multiplying...

When I started becoming interested in keeping / growing / buying succulents, and was doing a bit of reading on the subject, I discovered that two things are brought to your attention fairly early on.

1.  Don't water them.  When you think they need watering, don't.  And then wait a bit more.  When the soil is dry and the leaves have started to wrinkle, then give them a drenching.

2.  They don't want to be cold.  This always struck me as a bit odd, as there's a significant overlap between succulents and alpines.  Indeed, in many garden centres that I've visited, the terms are pretty much interchangeable.  And to me, 'alpine' says 'cold'.  Alpine skiing, anyone?  The Alps?
Despite all that, the prevailing opinion is  'Don't let your plants get too cold.'

Until recently, if the weather was good, then the plants would be put out in our gravel borders during the day, to expose them to as much light and air as possible.  Then, overnight, they'd be put back in the plastic tent that I'd bought in lieu of a greenhouse or cold frame, as we don't really have the space for either. (1)

The tent, back in the days when I only had two pots to manage

But about ten days ago, winter arrived.  At first it was merely cold overnight, so I lined the 'tent' with a sheet of cardboard for insulation, cut a large piece of the horticultural fleece that I bought a while back, covered up the plants in a tent-like fashion and zipped up the plastic door.  

'That'll keep them cosy', I thought. 

* * * * *

A digression on a non-plant matter.  Feel free to skip if you so wish.

While I was lying in bed that night, in a centrally-heated house, under a duvet and a blanket and still grumbling that my feet were cold, I considered just how 'cosy' it was possible to be in a plastic tent, on a piece of cardboard while the temperature was at, or possibly below, freezing.  That's pretty grim if you're a plant.  It is, I'd argue, considerably worse if you're a human.  

Some years ago I received a leaflet from Centrepoint.  They're a charity that helps young, homeless people to get off the street, into a warm, safe room, helps them with education and training and tries to get them on a path towards employment and independence.  I used to work near the old Centrepoint building in central London, and it struck a chord.  I've been supporting them ever since.  There are a number of charities, large and small, that help people of all ages, many of whom are homeless through no fault of their own.  At this time of the year though, I am reminded of some lyrics to a song called "Cause Cheap Is How I Feel" by the Canadian band, Cowboy Junkies.  The opening lines are:

It's the kind of night that's so cold

When you spit, it freezes before it hits the ground

And when a bum asks for a quarter, you give a dollar

If he's out tonight, he must be truly down

Cold and hungry is a terrible combination.  To be a youngster in that situation must be terrifying.  If there's anything you can do for a homeless charity, either as a one-off or an ongoing thing, you'll be making a difference.  People get upset if a plant dies due to cold.  What if that plant was someone's child?

Thanks.

* * * * *

When I got up for the second day in a row to find the water in the bowl the birds use as a bath / drinking bowl was frozen solid (2) I decided that something better was required.  We do have a garden store / cold frame sort of arrangement, but when we bought it, I had shown no interest in gardening, and so my wife had assumed (quite rightly) that it was only ever going to be used solely for her benefit.  At present there were no plants in it, rather it was being used as storage.  

When I mentioned that I might replace the tent with a small cold frame, Mrs Boo kindly offered to clear out the top shelf (which had a useful hinged lid) and see if the plants would fit.  They did, and so the tent was taken down and stored in the garage (3) and I cut a double thickness piece of bubble wrap to line the shelf with.  Partly to protect the shelf and partly as insulation. 

The cold frame that I have commandeered

And it was while the bubble wrap was out that I spied a post on a Succulent FaceBook group where someone had posted some pictures of their 'winterised' plants.  Each pot had been given a bubble-wrap jacket to protect against the frost.  Seemed like a good idea, so out with the scissors and sellotape, and not long afterward, each plants had been individually wrapped.

Bubble-wrapped and - hopefully - frost-proof!

With no source of heat in the cold frame, I'm hoping that the combination of a more robust shelter, the bubble-wrap and the tent of fleece which gets put in place every night will do the trick.  It certainly seems to have kept them healthy enough through the cold snap, and indeed today was mild enough for them to go back out on the gravel for a few hours.

It's quite a hands-on job, this plant collecting!   

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1) When we move, I think the priority is going to be "A good sized garden, with house attached."

(2)  With a selection of small birds tapping their feet and waiting for me to come and sort it out.

(3)  Probably never to be seen again.

You live and learn. And go shopping.

Back in the early days of my succulent adventures which stretch back, ooh, six weeks or more, I was young, idealistic and up for experimentation. (1)  Thus I ended up setting my assortment of newly-purchased plants into two containers.  One, a wide, flat bowl, had eight of my new acquisitions in it, while the other was a more artistic affair.  I'd seen in a book, a 'planting suggestion' whereby some old broken pots were stacked together to make a sort of ad-hoc rockery affair.  I thought it looked great and a few pots were 'modified' to allow me to create my own version.

When posting about my new creations online, some wiser heads, who have clearly been in the succulent game longer than me, pointed out that these plants quite often have different requirements in terms of light, water and so forth, and so putting them all in together my not be the *best* idea.

This may have been good advice.

An Aeonium (Cornish Pixie) which I'd put in the large flat bowl was a tiny plant (2) and as the rest of it's bowl-mates got settled in, the little Pixie began to get lost between and Aloe and a Delosperma.  So it got rescued and put into its own small pot where it seems to be much happier. (3).

As for the 'artistic rockery', while I loved the look of it, it did lose soil and grit every time I picked it up and at least one plant, the Crassula Sarcocaulis, had started to look decidedly unhappy.  I'm not sure what it's supposed to do over winter, but it looks to my untrained eye a bit like Rosemary, and this particular example had gone from looking healthy to having all it's lower leaves turn a yellowy-brown and start to fall off.  The upper ones still looked ok.

So I decided to cut my losses, picked up some small pots and, making up a small batch of soil / grit / perlite, repotted the four plants a couple of days ago.  The Crassula, along with Aeonium 'Barbatum' and Sedum 'Red Carpet' all went happily into new pots.  However, when I lifted the last of the four, Crassula 'Minima' I was a bit concerned.

The plant - at least the bit above soil level that I could see, appeared to be fine.  Glossy, plump leaves, nothing falling off or turning an alarming colour, no signs or rot or bugs.  But when I lifted it, there didn't seem to be any roots at all.  For a plant the size of...

/searches for a suitable comparison

...about the size of a lemon, I was expecting a fair sized root ball, but there was hardly anything there at all.  My wife, she of the green fingers and considerably more gardening experience, said that some of these plants don't, in many cases, have a huge root system and not to worry about it too much.

All four were repotted.  The soil they had come out of was bone dry (though no sign of wrinkling on the leaves), so I gave them a drink and a few days on, they all seem fairly happy.  We shall see how they fare over the coming weeks and months.

Less artistic, but probably better for the plants

I was going to see how I got on with my small collection before buying anything else.  When asking for advice in the early days, plenty of people had said "Don't go crazy - you can't buy everything!", but even so I'd created a 'Want list" after browsing a few plant and nursery websites.  And then Corseside Nursery popped a post up on Facebook saying that they were going to have a sale of plants in a few days.  These were, mostly, larger plants than they'd typically sell, but given that many seemed to be in one litre posts, they weren't going to be huge, and you just knew that they'd be top quality.

Be silly not to just have a look.

The sale worked thus:  Rosie and her Mum would post pictures of everything for sale at 7pm, and the first person to comment on a particular picture would be able to buy that plant.  I had a quick whip through, saw three that leapt out at me (two of which were on my Wanted list, and started commenting.

A few days later, the nice man from DHL turned up with a box containing a Crassula Ovata (the Money tree), an Aeonium Haworthii and an Aloe Nobilis.  They've all been repotted, labelled up and are, if I do say so myself, looking splendid.

(l-r) Aloe Noblis, Aeonium Haworthii, Crassula Ovata 

Right,  Now, no more buying.  For a while, anyway,

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1)  Well.  Two of these things, anyway.

(2)  I guess the clue is in the name.

(3)  At least until about half an hour ago, when I knocked the pot over and had to do some hasty repotting.  I think it'll survive.

Signing up...

When you take up collecting / growing succulents as a hobby, one thing becomes apparent fairly early on.  There are a lot of them!  A quick google suggests something in the region of 10,000 different plants, spread across 60 different plant families.  So if you have the Pokémon gene, i.e. "Gotta catch 'em all" you're going to need deep pockets and a very large greenhouse.

Which is why (I'm guessing), people tend to specialise - they find a subgroup they like and concentrate on those.  Makes the hobby more manageable.  And affordable.

As mentioned in a previous entry, in my limited experience, it seems that your average garden centre will stock a handful of the basic plants, and often just labelled as a generic 'succulent' rather than identifying a particular species.  If you're after a specific plant, you'll need a specialist nursery which may mean a trip out, but more likely, will mean a trip to the internet. 

Having done a bit of reading up before I made any purchases, I had a short(ish) wishlist of not-too-rare and not-too-difficult-to-look-after plants when I finally took the purchasing plunge at a trip to RHS Wisley a while back.  And on that list were Lithops, or Living Stones. (1)

While some people choose plants for their flowers, I'm drawn to unusual shapes and textures and Lithops most definitely tick those boxes.  They don't look like plants at all, more something that congealed or, as the name suggests, a stone.

Recently I spent an idle half-hour browsing the interweb looking for some of these odd little plants to see how much they cost, how difficult they are to grow and so forth.  And I couldn't find them anywhere.

The best I could do was find some seeds on Etsy which, with no disrespect to that website at all, does not strike me as the first port of call when it comes to specialist plants.  After a bit of head-scratching, I remembered that after I'd bought some plants from Corseside Nursery (highly recommended!), I'd joined their 'Secrets of Succulents' Facebook Group.  So off I went to pick their collective brain.

The lovely Rosie, one half of the Corseside team was kind enough to ask around some other growers and the upshot was that no-one seemed to carry them.  But she did suggest that the British Cactus and Succulent Society usually had a good selection of seeds that were available to members...

Cue some more browsing, and £20 later I am a fully paid up member of the BCSS! (2)

The British Cactus And Succulent Society, of which I am now a member

A couple of days later my welcome pack arrives.  A slew of useful sheets on a variety of subjects - succulents, cacti, propagation and so on, plus a car sticker (very retro), my membership card and a pen.  You can't have too many pens.

Storing seeds in an envelope seems to be the accepted way of doing things

I register for the BCSS website and find that they also have an online forum.  I sign up for this too, and spend some time reading through it.  Like any organisation, it seems that there is a healthy dose of internal politics at the heart of the society. I do post a "Hello" thread and a question about propagation, but I think I'll largely just stay as a fly on the wall for now, until I get a feel for the lie of the land.

The other thing in the pack is a small note informing me of my local group, which turns out to meet monthly at Capel Manor, a Horticultural College and public gardens not far from us.  I'm just waiting to see if they have any more meetings this side of Christmas.  If they do, I'll try and go along to say hi.

And as I type, I've just remembered that one of the reasons I joined was for seeds.  I've just gone back in, cross referenced my 'Want list' with their 'Got list' and I've ordered seeds (seed? For 50p, I'm not sure how many of each you get), plus their special offer of "30 packs of Mesemb for £9.50".

I guess we'll soon find out whether Mesembs are Living Stones or not!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1)  I have also heard the term Mesembryanthemum, or Mesembs bandied about.  This seems to refer to Ice plants.  I'm not sure whether it's another terms for Living Stones or whether they are just adjacent to each other in the plant world.  Something else to research on a rainy day.

(2)  For some reason, I suddenly feel middle-aged.

A first casualty...

When I planted up my first group of succulents I didn't consider each plant's watering, light or temperature requirements.  I didn't research whether they were happy or not being crowded in with other plants or if they needed space.  Instead I took the not terribly scientific approach of "What looks nice?"  Thus I ended up with eight plants in a wide-ish, shallow pot.  They were a mix of substantial (1) plants and some smaller specimens (2).

They've been planted up a few weeks now, and I take them out of their plastic cold frame and put them out in the garden during the day to maximise their exposure to air and light, only bringing them in at night, or if the rain threatens.  And they seem to be doing ok.  They all look healthy, the Delosperma 'Congestum' seems to be spreading itself out a little and on the whole, I - and they - are quite pleased.

Except one.  One of the dwarf plants, Aeonium 'Cornish Pixie', got slightly squeezed between the aforementioned Delosperma and the Echiveria 'Cubic Frost'.  As these two have relaxed and spread out (3), the Cornish Pixie has suffered.  It's ended up almost under the Echiveria, which, I suspect, has reduced the light and air getting to it.  As a result, when I inspected it the other day, it looked a bit worse for wear.  Leaves were dropping off and it generally appeared a bit 'sorry for itself'.

Mrs Boo to the rescue!  We found a small pot, mixed up some suitable compost and grit and lifted the Pixie out, tidied it up a little and repotted it.  It's early days yet, but it seems to be doing ok at the moment.  It'll take a while to be sure though.  How long, I don't know - weeks, possibly months, rather than days at a guess.

Cornish Pixie in its new home

But it gave the opportunity to look at the main pot again, and we're thinking that the other smaller plants may benefit from their own space.  Therefore I think that Pachyphytum 'Little Jewel' and Sedum 'Silver Roses' may be on the move soon.  There is a Sempervivum 'big sam Pink Pomelo' that is considerably smaller than the other plants, but at present it seems to be holding its own, so it can probably stay where it is for now.

It'll make the pot look unbalanced for a while, but this first attempt was always going to be a learning process, so if things have to be moved, or if I have to find a new plants to go into the gap (4), then so be it.

I shall report back!

The other news is that I have joined the British Cactus and Succulent Society.  More on that next time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1)  Relatively speaking.  Even the largest, the Aloe, is no more than about 5" across.

(2)  I'd picked up the 'Succulent Fairy Garden' Dwarf collection from Corseside Nursery - a selection of five miniature plants.

(3)  Again, relatively speaking, these plants aren't known for their speed of growth.  It's probably more that they're out of a small pot and have just spread out a bit.

(4)  A new plant!  Such a hardship!