Oh well. Not having much excess cash at my disposal certainly heightens the thrill of the hunt!
What's on YOUR wish list?
GARDENING SUCCS |
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My wish list is getting more exotic, folks! Here are the latest additions. It's dominated by crassula (crassulas?) these days. Hm, I might need a trip to South Africa. Click on a photo to go to the website it's from. (I try to use only fair use photos... an ongoing challenge.) I've done so-so on finding the plants that have been on my wish list in the past. Recent acquisitions include two crassula deceptors (I'm successfully rooting some cuttings from those, too!) and several haworthia truncatas (and variations thereof). But others have been either impossible to procure or prohibitively expensive, particularly agave excelsior and agave "Joe Hoak." I found one of the latter at East Bay Nursery in Oakland and it was over $60! Had a bunch of babies, though. Maybe I could have sold them off to pay for the mama...
Oh well. Not having much excess cash at my disposal certainly heightens the thrill of the hunt! What's on YOUR wish list? First of all, I wanted to thank all the new readers who are following Gardening Succs! I really appreciate it. This blog has gone from zilch, zip, nada to about 200 visitors each day (with a high of 800!), and the Gardening Succs Facebook page has over 1000 "likes." Thank you! Next, a confession: I suffer from propag-addiction, one of the most common succulent ailments around (more info on specific ailments soon--I feel another infographic coming on...). Sooo, following the growers at Lone Pine, I decided to start using flats for the plants I both (1) already have several of and (2) would like to grow more of. But since I don't have enough of any one type to fill a flat, I used two different kinds to fill a flat: In the next flat I made, I used four different kinds. (So far, I've only made these two flats.) What am I going to do with the new plants? Sell them? Give them away? Propagate more plants and see if I can get on "Hoarders?" I have no idea. Most likely, I'll try to trade them with other succulent aficionados for plants I don't have yet. For many of my plants, though, I only have one or two specimens. Or three. Or four. (Whatever--don't judge me.) Here's a shot of the inside of part of my greenhouse. And lastly, just for fun, two random pictures I took in my backyard the other day. Thanks again for being awesome, and for sticking around to watch this blog grow. I promise you, it'll only get better!
This weekend, we had the pleasure of joining my parents at the lovely Lone Pine Gardens in Sebastopol, CA. Primarily a wholesale nursery, Lone Pine is open to the public Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It's worth a pilgrimage. The owners are terrifically knowledgeable, and the nursery always has a magnificent selection. I also like wandering around the growing grounds--and my favorite part is probably the trays full of different kinds of semps. Seeing one kind of sempervivum en masse is always a treat: Lone Pine also has some lovely bonsai. Many of these are traditional-looking bonsai, but the bonsai area also featured these gorgeous, tiny semps in a little dish: Admittedly, I went seeking some unusual types of crassula, and found nothing on that score this visit. However, I didn't leave empty-handed! In an admirable exercise of self-restraint, I took home only three plants: Lastly, I got my first conophytum! I was nervous, but the good folks at Lone Pine just said that if I "barely water it," it will be fine. The pot is actually a wooden bowl my girlfriend made a few years ago and never finished. I sanded it down and then rubbed it over with peanut oil and let it dry. The top dressing is jade pebbles. It turned out well, no? Have any of you succ-ers visited Lone Pine? What's your favorite nursery north of San Francisco? As some of you have noticed, I've been posting a little less frequently than usual lately--that's because I've been so busy planting! (Well, and working a lot.) I thought I'd share a few recent favorites from the past two weekends. This one occupied several hours. I took an old basket my girlfriend dug out of the garage and made a sempervivum landscape. This has at least 20 different varieties of semps and jovibarba, and was a blast to make. You can't tell from this photo, but I played a lot with height, and made little hills and valleys. I also used chunks of wood and stone in the landscape. The final product is about 24-30" x about 14-18". Click on the pic below for a larger version. I made an indoor planting of five different kinds of haworthia here, using a pot I found in San Diego for $3. (It didn't have holes in the bottom, but the problem was easily remedied by a diamond-tipped drill bit.) From left to right, these are: h. parksiana; h. cymbiformis (variegated); h. truncata; [aack--not sure]; h. cooperi. Next up: crassula coccinea (I think), surrounded by a cottony expanse of sempervivum arachnoideum, potted into a shallow square pot from Succulent Gardens. Here's a birds'-eye view. The semps become a kind of top dressing themselves. Finally, I made this one using a gorgeous echeveria chroma ($1.98, Half Moon Bay Nursery) and some gasteria pups and small, misc. cuttings. I integrated random little metal objects my handy girlfriend was throwing away when she cleaned out her workshop. What would you call this--steampunk succulents? During my visit to San Diego, several succ-ers told me not to miss the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas. I did as instructed. Despite the $12 entry fee, it was well worth a visit. The place is huge--I spent two hours there and covered less than half of it (concentrating, as you might imagine, on the succ-heavy portions). The garden is arranged into several smaller sub-gardens, some arranged by theme (e.g. undersea; children's; landscape for fire safety) and others arranged by region (e.g., Australian; Mexican; Canary Islands). Here are some pics I took in particular gardens. Undersea Garden Succulent Overlook Mexican Garden Succulent Display Garden My only complaint was that so many of their plants weren't identified (and I detected only the scantest correlation between a plant's rarity and its likelihood of bearing a label). So while you can come here to see a lot of plants, I think the best way to enjoy this garden is just to enjoy the beautiful displays of color, light, and shape without worrying too much about what's what. All, in all, though--definitely worth a visit. |
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