New Year, New Pots

So shortly after Christmas, I decided to hit up Lowes to see if they still had any of those small succulent pots; by two days after Christmas, they were down to one sad sad kalanchoe chocolate soldier and a few dead looking airplants.  On the upside, storage …

Lithops: Day Four (surprise!)

Apparently after having posting on Facebook recently about lithops (aka, “living stones” – which I hadn’t really heard of until my partner mentioned them a few weeks ago … which was also the trigger that set me off on this succulent kick) my sister thought they were neat and ordered a package of seeds online and gave it to me over Christmas.  Apparently it shipped from Crete.  So these are jetsetting succulents!

I started a few small pots the day after Christmas – paying special attention to sterilizing the beach sand this time, given how it’s already showing signs of algae infestation in my Echevaria pots – and made a special succulent mixture of soil with very very low organic content and a mix of various sizes of particles – perlites, vermiculites, coarse and fine sands, and used some very small clay pots since I’ve read that lithops probably won’t be moved or replanted for 2-3 years.   I saran wrapped them up, have been spritzing the top daily for moisture, and am amazed that by day four I already have this:

Echeveria: week 2

Slight hints of algae starting in the sand despite my best efforts, but I’m up to nine sprouts and they’re coming along.

You keep saying “winter is coming” but…

It’s the first official day of winter, Christmas is a scant three days away, and it’s over 50 degrees out.  Granted, we’ve had at least one round of snow that “stuck” (although no longer than a day) and did freeze some of my flower pots …

Echeveria: Week 1

Thursday night, roughly one week after staring the Echeveria seeds, I didn’t see much activity.  I had moved them to a basement setup where I lower the shop lights and set the plants on a tall box so they are relatively close together – I …