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...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
(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.
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