Next steps

Like many people, I have a number of hobbies.  I'm an avid Lego collector.  I'm learning to play the Ukulele.  I like to juggle.  I play the drums.  I love to write.  I'm a video gamer.  Add in the obligatory "I like reading, I enjoy watching films etc etc", and there's usually something I can be doing at any given moment, hobby-wise, which stops me from doing the hoovering or figuring out how the washing machine works.

And with all those hobbies, there is always something to do.  A Lego set to build or take apart.  Or blog about. (1)  Chords, scales or songs to practice on the Uke.  A juggling pattern to learn or improve.  You get the drift.

But gardening...

I've 'finished' my first two planters, the ones I mentioned in the last entry.  And now... what?  Do I just sit and look at them?  We've already established that succulents are, broadly, slow growing so it's not like there's going to be any change in the next few days or weeks.

Months?  

Maybe.  But probably not.

I understand that when you've got a whole garden, or a greenhouse full of plants, then yes, there probably is something to do every day.  Some pruning here, some watering there.  Inspecting for bugs or repotting plants that have outgrown their home.  But when you've only got two pots...

Option one would obviously be: "Go and buy a whole load more plants."  As fun as that sounds, it's all too easy to run before you can walk and end up in the 'All the gear, no idea' situation, so I probably won't do that. (2)  Having said that, it hasn't stopped me spending half an hour browsing a couple of websites, and coming up with at least fifteen plants that have just gone on my 'Plants Wanted' spreadsheet. (3)

Another option is to spend the time educating yourself.  To that end, I've asked, at a couple of different places online, the question: 

"What do you wish you'd known before you started collecting and growing succulents?" 

Most popular answer: "I wish I'd known how addictive it is as a hobby."  Sorry, wallet!  But forewarned is forearmed and all that.

After that, there were some more practical answers.  Things like a) ensuring that the soil is sufficiently free-draining; b) the fact that there isn't one magic soil formula for every plant; c) don't water when the soil is dry - water when the plant looks thirsty.  And the one that made me pause for thought...

"That different succulents have different light and water requirements - e.g. echeverias need a ton of light vs haworthia and sedum happy in partial shade. Until you understand these requirements better, it’s better to keep them in individual pots."

Thank you, fellow Reddit user.

/looks at random mix of plants that he put in a pot without considering their care needs

Part of the inspiration for the assortment that I created were a couple of large planters that I saw on our recent trip to Wisley.  The planting area on each was about three feet across and they were packed with a wide variety different plants.  

Weren't they? 

I dug my phone out, as I'm pretty sure I took a picture of one of them.

Not the random assortment I thought it was

Ah!

Maybe they weren't quite as varied as I remember.  On closer inspection, it appears to my novice's eye, that they may, in fact, all be variations on a theme.  I could be getting some practice at replanting sooner rather than later.

Other than that, I've been looking around for interesting looking books on the subject, and useful websites and blogs.  Fortunately, there seem to be many, many enthusiasts who are happy to share their knowledge, from tips for beginners all the way through to caring for the most obscure varieties of plants (and all points inbetween).  I'm bookmarking these for future reference, while any books that catch my eye go straight on the list that I wave under peoples noses, should they ask "What do you want for Christmas / your birthday?"

But uppermost in my mind at the moment is water.  These plants should sit, by and large, in dry soil, getting a drink (as mentioned earlier) when they look thirsty, not when the soil feels dry.  But what do you do when you get torrential rain for days on end, as we've had (are having!)?  The soil can be as free draining as a sieve, but if it's getting soaked, day after day, then that can't be good, right?  Root rot and all that bad stuff, which comes from sitting in water.

They're relatively sheltered, being right up against the house, but it's not like they're under any kind of roof.  I'm wondering whether I should be putting them in a cold frame - we do have one, but it's full of stuff at the moment.  It'd not cold overnight (though I have fleece on standby), but sitting under cover, even with the door open, would probably give the pots a fighting chance of drying out a bit.

I'll keep and eye on them - and the weather forecast - for a bit, but start clearing a bit of space.

Just in case.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1) I have a number of blogs.  The Lego one is justanotherlegoblog.blogspot.com

(2)  Probably.

(3)  I do like a spreadsheet.

Pott(er)ing

To recap.

I know nothing about gardening, but I've decided to have a go at growing some succulents.  To that end, I bought some.

End of recap.

I am now looking at a pot, about a dozen small plants, a bag of alpine grit that I bought a couple of days ago on an exploratory trip to the garden centre (1), plus some peat-free multipurpose compost and a bag of Perlite (2) that I swiped from my wife's supplies.

One of the things that I have learned from the books, websites and YouTube tutorials that I've been looking at recently, is that succulents have quite a fussy relationship with water.  Like any plant, they need water (3), but most of the time they don't want it.  Until they do.  At which point they seem to want a lot.

The rule of thumb appears to be to try and replicate their natural environment, so "Drought, monsoon, drought."  Or, "wait until the soil is bone dry, then give them a good soak, then wait until the soil has dried out completely again".

At this point I'm going to disappear down a rabbit-hole.  Anyone who has read my scribblings on just about any subject before will know that this happens frequently.  If you're a new reader and it bothers you, then I apologise.  But be warned it's going to keep happening.

Sidebar - Succulents v Alpines

Whenever I see succulents on sale, they are almost always in the 'Alpine' section.  Now when I think of 'Alpine', I think of Julie Andrews running up a mountain singing about the hills and how very much alive they are.  Mountaintop meadows, with lush green grass and dainty little flowers being crushed underfoot by herds of singing children and/or Swiss cows.  Succulents, on the other hand, I imagine to be clinging on to life in barren, heat-baked deserts in Mexico, Chile and other South-American countries. (4)

Two environments and two groups of plants which don't, at first glance, seem ripe for lumping in together.  But some research (5) suggest that yes, while they do come from radically different habitats, they do both need free-draining soil, can survive on remarkably little water and tend, as a result, to be slow growing and stay relatively compact in nature.  As a result they seem to get on well together.

Ok, garden centre organisers, I'll let you off.

End of sidebar.

Where were we?  Ah yes, we have some plants to... plant.

Free-draining soil, that's what we need!  I start off with four trowel fulls of multi-purpose, one trowel of grit and one of Perlite.  I mix it up and it doesn't seem like I've added enough 'draining' stuff, so I put two more helpings of grit and a smaller helping of Perlite in and swizzle it round.  That seems more like it to my untrained eye.

I get the pot/pan/dish (not sure what it's called) and put a bit of broken flowerpot over the drainage hole.  This will still allow water to drain freely, but will hopefully stop the compost from washing out.  (6)  I then put all the compost/grit/Perlite mix in and, as I regard a half-full pot, I realise I'm going to need quite a bit more.  

Pour, pour.  Mix, mix.

Now it's time to plant.  From watching Gardener's World on a Friday evening, I know that Monty Don usually has some specific things to say about planting.  Sometimes you need to bury things deep.  Sometimes, the thing you're planting needs to be almost clear of the soil.  Trees with grafts need to be planted carefully so the graft is clear of the soil.  Or should it be buried - I'm not sure.

So it's at this point that I realise that I don't know how deep in the soil these plants should be.  In the back of my mind I recall something about trying to keep the leaves clear of the soil, so that's what I aim to do.  I put the pots on top of the soil and mix them around until I get an arrangement I like, and then start scooping out dirt.

Are they planted at the right depth?  I'm really not sure.  But given that succulents are believed to have been around for approximately 10 million years, and will have survived most of that time without the aid of Perlite and Whichford pottery, I'm pretty sure that as long as I've got it vaguely right, they'll hang in there.

One thing I am sure about is that while the pot looks great, I've still got four small plants left.  I could try and cram them in, but I figure I'll find them a new home elsewhere.  My little Succulent book, which has been my bible thus far, has a few planting suggestions, including making up a sort of mini-rockery type thing out of broken flowerpots, and I'm rather taken with it.  It consists of two small, broken flowerpots stacked inside a larger, broken flowerpot, with the plants put either in the pots, or in the crevices inbetween.

My wife has provided me with two small, broken pots.  There are also two, larger pots which are, however, still very much intact.

Hey!  Look over there!  Is that Meryl Streep?

I now notice that one of the larger pots is in fact broken, which would be convenient except that too much of it is broken to suit my purposes.

No!  Look!  It's not Meryl Streep - it's Sue Gray! (7)

On closer inspection, the other pot, which only seemed to be intact is actually broken as well, but happily it's broken in a way that would work in a most serendipitous manner for my planting purposes.

I put some soil mix in the bottom, wedge the smaller pots in, fill them up and then give the remaining plants a new home.

I stand back and admire my efforts and consider myself quite pleased with this first attempt.  Things are further improved when my wife comes to inspect my handiwork and finds some pea-shingle to top dress the pots with.  This has the dual benefit of making them look nicer and will aid in stopping the soil washing away.  It certainly will with the pan.  The tower of broken pots, I'm less sure about, but we'll just have to see how that goes.

So this is what the final outcome looks like...

Clockwise from top:  

Aloe, 'brevifola', Echiveria, 'Cubic Frost', Aeonium, 'Cornish Pixie' (very small, difficult to see), Delosperma, 'congestum', Arenaria, 'Balearica', Pachyphytum, 'Little Jewel', Sedum, 'Silver Roses', (centre) Sempervivum, 'big sam Pink Pomelo'

Clockwise from left: Crassula, 'Minima', Crassula, 'Sarcocaulis', Aeonium, 'Barbatum', Sedum, 'Red Carpet'

As many of the plants had definitely dried out, I gave them a good drink - I shall have to find out whether you should water in between the plants, or from above (as would happen when it rains).  But for now I just need to keep an eye on them to see how things progress.

At present, temperatures are okay overnight, but I have made a preemptive strike and bought some horticultural fleece as we don't have the benefit of a greenhouse.  Hopefully I won't need to wrap them up just yet.

Might just go back and browse the Corseside Nursery website in the meantime...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

(1)  There were a wide and bewildering variety of types of grit available.  Can they really be that different?  They're just little bits of stone, right?

(2)  I'm still trying to figure out if Perlite is a trade name or not, and thus whether it needs to be capitalised.  What I have discovered is that it is "...an amorphous volcanic glass that has a relatively high water content, typically formed by the hydration of obsidian." (Thank you, wikipedia.)  In addition, "it also improves drainage, so is ideal to mix into compost to ensure water drains freely." (Thank you, Gardenersworld.com)

(3) Big assumption there - happy to be corrected.

(4)  While succulents are native to South America, it turns out that it's South Africa that is home to about a third of all succulent varieties, though they appear on every continent apart from Antartica.  (Don't get me started on that.  When I was at school, they were only five continents.  Mind you, there were also nine planets in the solar system.  Meddling scientists have a lot to answer for.)

(5)  In the sketchiest sense of the word.

(6)  Clearly I have picked up some gardening knowledge by osmosis.  Or maybe this was completely the wrong thing to do.  I reiterate my caveat that if you learn anything from me, it'll be from my mistakes. 

(7) Topical political reference which probably won't mean anything in years to come, but she's all over the news in September '24.

In the beginning...

 Welcome to what, after almost three minutes of deliberation, I have decided to call: 

"Growing Succulents.  How Hard Can It Be?" 

First things first.  I am not a gardener. 

I do occasionally 'do' gardening but this is, by and large, limited to mowing the lawn, moving bags of compost, or donning body armour to go up a ladder and chop off 'some of that bl&*dy pyracantha'.

If you are reading this blog in order to get advice from an expert, I urge you to look elsewhere.  What I know about gardening generally, and succulents specifically, could be written on the back of a postage stamp, and you wouldn't need to use a particularly small font.

This blog will document my attempts to learn something about the subject, largely through trial and error.  So I'd suggest that you're more likely to learn from my mistakes than my experience.

But as the title says... How hard can it be?  Right?

Right?

When it comes to gardening, my wife is the one with the green fingers, and while I've always appreciated how lovely she makes our garden look, I've never felt the urge to get involved.  (1)

Until now.

Having trailed around garden centres and RHS / National Trust / English Heritage gardens for many years, my eye has become expertly honed.  I can now, at a glance, identify 'big plants', 'small plants', 'green plants' and 'colourful plants'. (2)  And Hostas.  I do know what a Hosta looks like. (3)  But the ones that always catch my attention are succulents.  And maybe alpines.  I'm a bit fuzzy on where the line is drawn between succulents and alpines.  And let's not bring cacti into it just yet.  

But definitely succulents.

I think it's the fact that quite often they don't actually look like plants at all that appeals.  More like some sort of alien spore or growth that's found a crevice and thought "I'll just hang out here for a while before taking over the planet."

This interest first manifested itself seriously about six months ago when we visited somewhere or other and I came back with an RHS book entitled 'The Little Book of Cacti & Succulents'.  It seemed written for novices, had plenty of pictures and made the whole thing seem eminently do-able. 

Trouble was, whenever we visited our local garden centres (which happens with alarming regularity), the range of succulents on offer varied from 'very small' to 'non-existent'.  Where there were plants available, they just seemed to be labelled as 'generic succulent', which I found frustrating, as if I'm going to do something, I tend to want to know all there is to know, so varietal names are a must.

The one place that did have a modest range only had plants that were... substantial, and as I felt like making up an assortment, I would have needed a dustbin lid rather than a pot.

But for our recent wedding anniversary, my better half said "We haven't been to Wisley for a while, let's have a day out." 

And they have a plant shop.

A well stocked plant shop.

Reader, I shopped.

I was going to by a smallish, plain pot for about £4.00, but my wife pointed out a much nicer one, by Whichford Pottery which was 'a better shape', and 'frost-proof'.  It was also five times the price!

I came home with a small selection of plants, which my notes tell me are...

Sempervivum : 'big sam Pink Pomelo'
Sedum: 'Silver Roses'

Delosperma: 'congestum'

Echevaria: 'Cubic Frost'

Arenaria: 'Balearica'

Sempervivum 'big sam Pink Pomelo'

Sedum 'Silver Roses'

Deliosperma 'congestum'

Echevaria 'Cubic Frost'

Arenaria 'Balearica'

Now I would like to be able to tell you that these were carefully selected to work well together, that they would tolerate the conditions that we have in our garden, and that they would be simple for a novice to care for.

Can I tell you that?

No.

I liked the look of them.

In my defence, my book had suggested some plants that were good for beginners, and I think that there was some overlap with that list and what I bought.  But when I got home, I looked at the five plants, sitting loosely in the large pot, waiting to be planted and thought "They're going to look lost in there.  I should buy some more!"

To the internet!

I didn't take long to find Corseside Nursery's website, and after some browsing, the following found their way into my basket.

Aloe: 'Brevifolia'
Pachyphytum: 'Little Jewel'

And a group of five small  'Fairy Garden' plants...

Crassula: 'Minima'

Aeonium: 'Cornish Pixie'

Aeonium: 'Barbatum'

Crassula: 'Sarcocaulis'
Sedum: 'Red Carpet'

These arrived this morning, carefully parcelled up and no worse the wear for a trip from the wilds of Wales.

Time to get planting!

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

(1)  Unless you count the phase I had, about 15 years ago, where I took a spider plant into the office and ended up giving baby plants to most of my colleagues.  However, I'd say that 'Growing a spider plant' is to gardening, what 'Putting a shop-bought ciabatta into the oven' is to baking. 

(2)  Gardeners World.  If Monty decides to retire, you can contact me via the blog.

(3)  They look like a small Gunnera!