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With the AC Infinity controller still not connecting to the app, I don't have real-time access to the temperature in the greenhouse. The two Elitech thermometers (inside and outside) are mostly wonderful but I have to plug them into the USB port on my laptop, download the data, then import into Excel. It's a process. I don't download the Elitechs every days, so to make sure the heaters are working, I check the 24-hour low on a standalone TempPro TP50 thermometer. All of my plants looked OK today, but I got a bit concerned when the TempPro showed last night's low inside the greenhouse at 33 degrees. With the way my two heaters are set up, it should not dip below 40 even if the outside temperature is 18, which it was.

That prompted me to download the inside Elitech data, which showed that the low inside the greenhouse last night was 39.5. That means the primary heater handled it and the secondary heater did not come on. This TempPro seems accurate to about 6 degrees measured against the Elitechs, sometimes high and sometimes low, which is ridiculously bad! This is a device that has 153,000 reviews and a 4.6 rating on Amazon, so maybe I got a bad copy. This is not useful to me and I'm still in the Amazon return window. I'm starting to believe that to be accurate, a thermometer has to have an external probe, which the TempPro does not.

I said the Elitechs are "mostly" wonderful. But sometimes they can be a pain to get started. If I hold down the start button and nothing happens, I have to plug it back into my laptop and do a reset. When I checked the outside Elitech today, apparently the restart didn't happen nine days ago and I missed all of that data. That's OK, I can get highs and lows from the National Weather Service. I would be much more upset if the inside Elitech missed nine days. I have compared the numbers from the outside Elitech to temperatures reported by the National Weather Service, and they are usually within a few degrees of each other. The slight difference is to be expected since they are at different locations. Since I have this other source for outside temperatures, I have thought about using the outside Elitech for other purposes, such as burying the probe in one of the planting beds to monitor variations in soil temperature over a period of time, or using it in the garage during the winter.

This is an example of an Elitech-produced graph. It is the inside data for April 13-16. When you see little squiggles as the temperature bottoms out, that is the heater cycling on and off. That is what I want to see when I look at these graphs.

The ideal situation would be to get the AC Infinity connection to the app going again. I'll fiddle with it when the weather warms up, but for now the fan is still coming on at appropriate times and I don't want to mess that up. I think it will require a complete reset, and maybe replacing the controller. If I had to do it all over again, I would tell Jesse to forget the AC Infinity equipment and just leave a hole for a standard-sized fan. I would control it with a simple thermostat like I use with the heaters. I have a relative who is an electrical engineer; maybe I will talk him into rewiring the fan to use a standard plug. I can't believe people entrust their grow setups, particularly greenhouse heaters, to AC Infinity's quirky equipment and unusable software with an interface from the 1980s. There have been two significant failures since installation last July, which I would define as atrociously unreliable. We got through it somehow when when the fan failed during the hottest part of the year and it took more than a week to get a replacement. The second failure is this communications gliche that has no obvious solution. Another pet peeve, the apparent default setting for screen brightness is "invisible during the day," and my attempts to adjust it do not stick.

It seems like an eternity, but Supertunias 'Honey' and 'Blue Vein' were put in their baskets and raised to the rafters of the greenhouse just five days ago. Fearing the worst from the weather, I did not want to plant all eight. But 'Honey' seems comfortable enough, putting out these yellow and peach blossoms.

'Blue Vein' has some buds but no blossoms since being transplanted. We haven't had tunia weather (defined as 60-75 degrees) since planting, but the greenhouse seems to be giving the Supertunias and the generics enough protection to produce something. Last year's petunias bloomed right up until I pruned them Jan. 31 in the garage and haven't done much since, but some of their clones and volunteers have nice blooms this spring in the greenhouse. The petunia cloning program had about a 50% success rate with the use of rooting hormone (and much lower without), so that's information I can use going forward.

Strawberries planted

The Burpee bare root bundle turned out to contain 26 'Albion' strawberry roots, one extra. I planted 11 of them plus the 'Montana' plant in the east bed (pictured), 10 in four hanging baskets, and five in two grow bags. The grow bags are the backups if some of the others don't thrive. I'll check the plants tomorrow before I spread the straw.

That leaves the six Supertunias to put in four baskets. Some of the clones seem to be thriving, especially Royal Velvet, so I may be able to augment some of the baskets with them. Blue Vein is definitely getting at least one Royal Velvet clone. The six tunias in the garage closet all look good under their grow lights, but I can tell that getting them into the baskets and hanging them in real sunlight inside the greenhouse will be good for them. The weather will remain cold through Tuesday, but I'll at least get the baskets ready before then. It was warmer in February than it has been the past few days. (Low on Feb. 7: 40 degrees, 20 degrees warmer than recent lows.)

I have to decide what to do with last year's petunia pot. I thought there were only three plants in there but now it looks like there were six. I just took out one that was dead, and several others aren't looking great. Maybe a couple of them are worth saving, or I might just start over in a pot with new soil, the two big clones (same purple-veined blooms) and two or three volunteers including 'Red Lodge Red Vein'™.

That will take care of most of the planting for a while until the various seedlings are ready. I'll pot up the tomato seedlings to 4" soon, and maybe some others. The next major project is setting up irrigation, which will be interesting with 14 hanging baskets (6 tunia, 4 strawberry, 2 geraniums, 2 peas/cucs) and miscellaneous pots in addition to the four main planting beds.

I just ordered another six Epic 6-cell seed starters from Botanical Interests, Epic Gardening's seed company. No minimum free shipping. I don't know that I need another six this year, but these things are built like tanks and I will use them in the future. Speaking of Epic gardening, I'm cool now because I have joined the strawberry club and I say "strawbs" just like Eric.

Everything in place

The strawberries arrived from Burpee's today, 25 'Albion' bare roots and one 'Montana' plant. I haven't opened the bare roots bag and won't until just before I plant them, but here is 'Montana.' It had six hard little berries on it, which I clipped off so the plant could devote its energy to recovering from its trip. I guess the plant is OK, but the ones at Home Depot are lush in comparison. Once again, to get the variety I wanted, I had to order online. I gave it a drink and stuck it under the grow lights in the closet with the Supertunias. The bare roots bag is in a bucket in the garage.

A snowstorm dropped five inches on us yesterday and today, but it seems to be over. It won't really warm up until Tuesday, but with the heat on in the greenhouse, it will be at least the mid-40s inside at night and warmer during the day. The current plan is to plant the strawberries tomorrow, and the Supertunias no later than Tuesday. Then I have to set up irrigation, and the season really will be underway. I fertilized the potted non-succulents in the greenhouse today, keeping in mind that the planting beds already were fertilized this year with three inches of compost.

On the succulents front, Succulents Depot once again is not giving any indication that my recent order is going to be shipped anytime soon. The FAQs say orders are usually shipped within 1-3 days. I placed an order April 5 and cancelled it April 14 when I decided to get some of the items elsewhere. Then I re-ordered April 15 and once again my order is "confirmed" but not shipped. We are going to be out of town soon and I don't want the plants sitting in a dark box at the post office for 10 days. Succulents are tough, but that's ridiculous. Andrea at customer service has been very nice and says the delays are due to a backlog caused by shipping delays due to weather around the country. So I'm not going to get mad at them, but it is frustrating to place an order and then nothing happens. Andrea said if the order isn't shipped in the next couple days, it will be delayed to May 11 as I requested. I said I would follow up in a few days if I didn't hear anything else. I have already set the Mountain Crest Gardens order to ship on May 11 to avoid all of this uncertainty.

As I have said before, I would rather not even deal with the online companies, but despite the occasional surprise like 'Topsy Turvy' and 'Coastal Coral,' the locals usually just have the basics. This is my third order with Mountain Crest, and they will probably get a fourth unless I recover my sanity before then.

Springtime for Sempervivums

All of the Sempervivums except the little orphan are in the greenhouse now. If we didn't have some trips planned they would stay there from now until...forever. But I have to set up irrigation to keep all the other plants alive and it will get humid in there, so I will bring all of the succulents back to the garage to stay dry during our absence.

Some of them already have been growing this spring so before they get any further I took baseline images of them today. Since Semps grow mostly horizontally, not vertically, I took most of the images from above. I didn't have a tripod, didn't focus stack, and the light wasn't great so I'm not going to post all the images. But I thought two of them from the original Plants for Pets order unpacked Jan. 29 were worth a look.

I believe the first one is Unknown #3, and may have declared it dead prematurely. I appear to have gotten it mixed up with Unknown #4, which had pronounced purple tips. This is why I dislike getting plants that don't have IDs. Anyway, it looks like #3 is putting on some growth this spring, and the leaves are much darker than they were a few months ago.

The next one is and always has been Unknown #5. While #3 has added purple, #5 has been becoming more green. The other interesting thing about #5 is the way it pups. It has two new buds growing from the stem rather than forming on stalks, which means it is a species called Sempervivum heuffelii. Three of the six late lamented frost victims were heuffelii, but I don't know if you can draw conclusions from that since this one survived. In the overhead shot, the offsets are on opposite sides at about 2:00 and 8:00. The second image shows one of the offsets.

Of the original 10 Sempervivums, six were lost to the frost but one lives on through the orphan. Of the survivors, 'Budai Mountains' seems the least active. It isn't dying, but it hasn't reacted to spring yet. The actual Budai Mountains are a low range of hills (1,834 feet) in Hungary, much lower than my location in the Beartooth Mountains foothills (5,588 feet). It is somewhat less cold hardy than the others and maybe it needs it to warm up more. (But somehow it survived the frost.) Unknown #6 hasn't grown much but the edges of the leaves and the centers of the two rosettes are now very dark purple. Unknown #1, represented by the orphan, is very green and is growing new webbing.

I've been referring to #1 as an arachnoideum for lack of a better description, and it occurred to me to ask Google if all webbed Sempervivums were arachnoideums. The answer was "no." We will have to see what the offsets and flowers look like.

Including three on order, I'm now up to 16 live Sempervivum varieties including a duplicate of 'Gold Nugget.' I need to convert half of the greenhouse to gritty, well-draining soil to have somewhere to put them. The beds are 16.5 inches deep. I figure the top 12 inches of garden soil and compost needs to become 50% pumice, about half a yard (13.5 cubic feet). In Oregon next to the volcanoes, that would cost $25. Here, 1,000 miles away, I'm hoping it will be no more than $250. We don't have volcanoes.

I have updated the static Sempervivum page with all of my acquisitions, including those which have been lost, with links to images where appropriate:

Most recent acquisition, a tight-webbed unknown purchased at Nana's Bloomers, April 14:

Volunteers

I find it interesting that petunias that sprout from seed don't necessarily breed true to the characteristics of the parents, especially if the parents were hybrids. The volunteers from last year's purple pentunias are coming out red or pink. They do have the veining of the original, and if anything it is more pronounced in the one shown here. Clones, of course, do keep the original color and veining. Here are a volunteer and a clone.

Theoretically I could apply for a patent on this variation for discovering it, but I don't know that it is commercially desireable. The veining is intense, but the overall color is a bit blah. I suppose this is how they do it, breeding billions of petunias to find a few marketable variations that are worth cloning. But I can still give it a name and call it by an unenforceable trademark. May I introduce 'Red Lodge Red Vein'™. I'm going to save this one.

After three tries, I figured out the size of 3D-printed clips to use to hold the netting in place on the hoops in the west planting bed. The fabric is described as "Garden Pest Barrier Netting," and I doubt it holds in any heat. It just holds the pests out. Water passes through it so I don't have to take it apart for watering, and hopefully enough light gets through for all the lettuce and radishes to grow. I'll have to remove it from the right side to allow the peas to grow in a few weeks. As the image shows, it hangs down a bit, but I don't want to cut it in case I want to use taller hoops. I don't know whether this will work but I got sick of battling aphids all winter, and I have seen moths flying around the greenhouse already.

I have enough pipe for hoops and netting for all four beds, but I don't know whether I will do that. It depends on what pests hit the strawberries, flowers and onions.

It is Earth Day so of course I had to put an order in at Mountain Crest. I have no idea where I am going to put everything so I delayed shipment until May 11. By then the greenhouse will be in production and the garage can catch any overflow. Just don't ask me what I'm going to do Nov. 15 when it all comes back to the garage. The order includes:

• Crassula capitella ssp. Thyrsiflora 'Pagoda Village'
• Echeveria 'Doris Taylor'
• Echeveria 'Muesli'
• Echeveria 'Red Beauty'
• Echeveria elegans 'Mexican Snowball'
• Graptoveria 'Titubans Variegata'
• Sempervivum 'Gold Nugget'
• Sempervivum 'Gold Rush'

The 'Gold Nugget' was a freebie. I already have one but I had to dig it out of a pot with two bigger plants, and I have seen better copies. The fuzzy 'Doris Taylor' is the must-have on this list. I've had my eye on all of these except 'Red Beauty,' which was added to get me one cent over the free shipping threshhold.

First baskets

I put together my first baskets today. Actually my first Supertunia baskets; the pea baskets were planted weeks ago and have sprouted.

Winter is going to have its (hopefully) last gasp Thursday and Friday, and I was thinking about putting off doing the baskets until next week. But today I asked, "Which of the eight would I miss the least if they froze," the answer was Honey and Blue Veined. I've been having a hard time finding a match for Honey, and I have two purple varieties that seem to be more interesting than Blue Veined. So those are the two with which I began this experiment. I kept it simple, doing just one plant per basket. If my cloning program works, I will have 2-3 plants per basket, but Supertunia advocates claim that one plant will fill a basket.

First is Honey, and it is already flowering. The Blue Veined basket is next, and the question may arise whether you should plant the rootball in the middle, or try to balance the plant in the basket. The Blue Veined rootball was a bit skewed to one side, but I planted the ball in the middle. All the more room to add a Royal Velvet clone if that works out. (Or spend another $7 at Nana's.) I took 15 cuttings. Of those, five look very droopy and should be redone. The five best-looking cuttings are three Royal Velvet, a Honey, and a Priscilla.

When I put the potting mix in the strawberry and petunia baskets a few weeks ago, I used half Promix, half compost, and a dose of vermiculite. Everyone says the pH test strips are mostly useless, but for what is is worth I came up with a pH of 7, neutral. Both strawberries and petunias prefer a more acidic soil. Today I dumped the two baskets, screened out the bigger chunks that came in the compost, scattered some water-storing crystals, added two tablespoons per basket of soil acidifier, and planted the tunias in that mixture. I plan on doing the same for the other 10 petunia and strawberry baskets, and the three strawberry grow bags. I have already tried to incorporate the acidifier into the strawberry planting bed.

While I was making petunia baskets, I was distracted by helicopters attacking a 1,600-acre forest fire on a nearby mountain, five miles south of the greenhouse. The airport used by the choppers is right across the road from the greenhouse and lodge. Everyone is hoping that this does not spread into a 30,000-acre bomb like the one five years ago, just to the left (east) of the current one.

Five years ago, just to the east of the current fire:

New

I keep saying I'm not going to buy more succulents, but then I see something new like this Crassula 'Coastal Coral' at Garden Avenue Greenhouse in Billings. Today's other acquisitions were a tiny 'Budda's Temple' (Garden Avenue), an Echeveria 'Lime 'N Chile' (Home Depot), an Echeveria 'Rainbow' shipped from The Next Gardener as a replacement, and basil and sage (Nana's Bloomers).

All I have for pots right now, besides the green 3D print for the Crassula, is 6-inch squat pots. The 'Lime 'N Chile' is sort of small so I decided to free up a 4-inch cup by moving the healthy 'Raindrops' to a 6-inch. Everyone is happy. 'Lime 'N Chile' has not been real high on my "must-have" list, but this one has three stalks and I want to see what develops.

As I said, the 'Buddha's Temple' is tiny. How tiny is evident from the image below. I already have one but this little one was the perfect size to stick in one of the bowls.

The new 'Rainbow' looks OK, I guess. It doesn't have as many leaves as the first one, but the leaves progressively fell off of that one. Maybe if I had chopped the head off the diseased stem a few weeks ago I might have salvaged something, but I think it is beyond hope now. I have nestled the 'Rainbow' in a 6-inch squat pot among its relatives 'Perle von Nurnberg' and 'Red Sky,' and we will see what happens. My favorite plant propagation saying.

I've been trying to sprout basil all winter, and I overwintered two sage plants in the unheated greenhouse, but today I gave up and just bought one of each. My basil sprouts never get taller than an inch, and after coming out of dormancy, one of the sage is now dead and the other is sickly. I blame bugs for both situations. I'll try to keep the new plants clean.

It was my first visit to Garden Avenue Greenhouse on the east side of Billings. Comparing it to Nana's, I would say it is slightly more expensive, has a slightly lower plant selection, and has many more pots and accessories. I'm glad I visited once this year and probably won't go there again until next year. Nana's probably has everything I need and is 15 miles closer.

And finally, finally, I have a UPS tracking number for the strawberries. It is weird because Burpee has not notified me of shipment; I only know the package has shipped because I've been checking my account every day to see the status. There I found the UPS confirmation number. UPS says it is scheduled to arrive Friday, probably the last really cold day of the season with a low that night of 20 degrees. They will get garage protection for a few days. I'll probably plant the strawberries next Monday, and follow that up with the strawberry and Supertunia baskets. Then I have to set up irrigation, which will be fun with the 14 baskets. I see them do it in these commercial greenhouses, so how hard can it be?

It's not the zone

I still haven't put my Supertunias in baskets and am still awaiting delivery of the strawberries from Burpee. But even though I hope to be clear of both of those by early May, the soonest I can turn the heat off in the greenhouse and put the tunia and strawberry baskets outside will be nearly the middle of June.

But that's why I have a greenhouse. Without it, I never bothered to have a garden here in the Beartooth Mountains foothills (elevation 5,588 feet) because the growing season is so short. (And because the deer eat everything that isn't protected, but that's another story.) The planting Zone is 5a, but that doesn't give a complete picture. The zone just tells you the coldest it can get; it does not tell you how long winter lasts.

The average last frost date is June 9, and the average first frost date is Sept. 12. That is a growing season of only 95 days. Most of the larger cities in Alaska have a longer growing season.

Rapid City, SD (elevation 3,200 feet) where I grew up also is Zone 5a, but the frost dates are May 24 and Oct. 12 for a growing season of 141 days! Sioux Falls, SD (elevation 1,463) where I spent a large part of my career is Zone 4b-5a, but the growing season is longer than both of the others at 147 days. I'm guessing that is due to lower elevation. It can get very cold there, but it doesn't snow in June like it does here sometimes.

With the greenhouse, I tack extra time onto the growing season. Without heat it's probably an extra 4-6 weeks, and with heat it is 3+ months.

Here is how it looked today. (Why I take pictures with my phone when I have my little Canon with me is inexplicable.) Stuff is going on even though the main events are still weeks away.

The first image shows the bench with the shelves above, and the open area. I've decided the shelves will be mostly for succulents, and right now 10 Sempervivums are there, plus one Echeveria Purpusorum. The bench itself will keep only two of the plants shown, the oregano and rosemary in the middle of the back row. Obviously the seed starting trays are transient and their departure will leave plenty of room for succulents. The two 14" coir baskets above the bench will have strawberries and will remain in the greenhouse. The other ten coir baskets are all 16".

Big pots in the open area currently are my overwintered geranium, which looks great if a bit lopsided; sunflowers; my 2025 petunias which do not look good; and the hodgepodge pot with overwintered geranium and pentunia clones and volunteers. I'm thinking about wishing the old petunias into the cornfield and replacing them with two clones, just in front of the toolbox back on the bench. Above the open area are two borrowed geraniums. The one on the left has become stressed in just a week, I think because it is cooler here at night than it was in the greenhouse where it spent the winter.

To the right of the open area is the mini with the plastic cover removed. It would be 120 degrees in the mini if I left it on, so basically it is now a shelving unit. That's probably where the repotted 'Velveteen Aromatic' ™ and aloe and the extra rosemary and mint will reside. Some of the grow bags shown will end up at our house but most will remain here. The baskets shown here will have Supertunias and strawberries and eventually will be hanging outside somewhere. The strawberry bed is over by the window and is currently lined by mint plants that will go elsewhere.

Not shown are the beds along the south wall because there's not much going on yet. There are two baskets with peas. All six seeds have sprouted in one basket, but only three in the other. I don't know if I should thin the one basket to three, which was sort of the original plan, or just let it ride. I'll hang those baskets outside next to the strawberry bed, and eventually turn them over to cucumbers sometime in June.

When I acquired this greenhouse last year and filled the beds up with 50 bags of typical garden soil, I did not anticipate that I would transition within a year into an Australian woman of Asian descent. Look up "succulents" on YouTube and you'll see what I mean. "Growing Succulents with LizK" is the best example. LizK has done 776 videos on succulents in five years, one every couple of days. I've acquired a lot of succulents just since the end of January, more than 80, and succulents require a different type of soil than tomatoes.

The 2026 growing season isn't underway yet and already I am thinking of making major changes to the two planting beds on the west side which currently have lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and onions. I might transition them to hardy succulents (Sempervivum, Sedum and Delosperma) and hard herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage). In order to do this, I need to replace a substantial amount of the garden soil with pumice or something similar. Rough estimate: 14 cubic feet to replace 50% of the soil to a depth of one foot. Where do I buy half a yard of pumice? More important, how do I get rid of half a yard of gently-used garden soil?

The two east beds would remain flowers, strawberries and soft herbs, and I'll still have various grow pots with vegetables, flowers and herbs.

Strawberries, the hardy succulents and some of the hard herbs would remain in the beds over winter. Rosemary, marjoram and golden sage are borderline and might have to go to the garage, but thyme, oregano and regular sage should be able to overwinter. One of the sage plants I had has died, but I think it was due to bugs, not the weather. Anyway, best case, three of the four planting beds would be primarily hardy perennials. No seed starting, no plant buying, no succession planting, and (except for the strawbs) minimal watering. I'm talking myself into it.

I'm a Big Boy Now

The little Sempervivum survivor is starting to grow new webbing and is slightly larger than a month ago. It is time for him to take the next step in life and move from a 3.5-inch ceramic pot to a 5-inch terra cotta. I have another cactus on order and I need the ceramic pot to match the other three. I'll keep him in my office for a few days until the first watering. Then he will leave behind his life with the cacti and go off to the chilly but sunny greenhouse to be with the other Sempervivums.

Focus stacking notes: The closer the camera is to the subject, the more images that need to be taken. Neither 24 nor 36 covered the complete range needed, so I went to 60 for the above image.

Weirdness

With hundreds of species and thousands of cultivars and varieties, Echeveria has a wide range of weird adaptations. Some are natural, and some like the bumps on 'Raindrops' are brought out by a hybridizer. When I got this plant more than two months ago, there weren't a lot of bumps. Now there are. The color also has shifted toward the pastel as it has been living in a south-facing window under grow lights. The first image is from today; the second is from March 13 after the plant had recovered from shipping but before the color shifted and the bumps really started to develop.

This is Coleus Colorblaze Wicked Witch, and Coleus in general are sort of weird. Most of them do not have conventional green leaves. One lesson I learned from succulents is "Don't overwater," and even though this is not a succulent I have resisted the urge to drown it. The surface of the soil is dry, but my moisture meter says, "Wait!" There still is some moisture a few inches down, and glazed ceramic does not dry out as fast as terra cotta.

I'm getting a few more weird things in my Succulents Depot re-order, including a Thimble Cactus. Images to come.

Speaking of orders, I said I wasn't going to bother complaining to The Next Gardener about their order a month ago because I didn't know if the plants I would receive would be any better than what I got. But they reached out to me about the 'Apricot Beauty' fiasco and sent me what appears to be a good replacement, so I also mentioned to them that the Echeveria 'Rainbow' was falling apart and did not appear to have a healthy stem. They are processing a replacement.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to unbox the Delosperma 'Fire Spinner' Ice Plants I just received from The Three Company via Amazon. These are weird also, colorful flowers and hardy down to Zone 3.

Later:

The pots are six inches deep and I don't know if the roots are really that long. I found two available eight-inch terra cotta pots at the greenhouse...after I evicted a 'Velveteen Aromatic'™ from one of them.