And so it begins

I've been diverted by succulents the past few months, but now it is time to get the greenhouse ready for our artificially-lengthened growing season. I was looking for bags of garden soil on Google last night and found a sale at Ace for 0.75-cubic foot bags, $2.50 each. Usually these are at least $4.50, so I ordered 15 and picked them up today. Monday I will pick up my cubic yard of compost and a few other supplies, then spend Tuesday doing my four different soil mixes and filling up the planters, pots, grow bags and baskets. The four mixes are:

• Strawberries and Supertunias in baskets, grow bags and pots: 45% Promix, 45% compost, 10% vermiculite.
• Greenhouse planter beds: 90% compost, 10% vermiculite, spread 2 inches on top of the existing soil.
• Most other pots and grow bags: 10% Promix, 40% garden soil, 40% compost, 10% vermiculite.
• With some pots and grow bags (potato, Cuban Oregano, thyme, and rosemary), I will use the previous mix except substitute perlite for vermiculite. Perlite has less water retention but still loosens the soil.

I calculated it all out and came up with 1 cubic yard of compost, 16 bags of soil (I already had one), and six cubic feet of Promix which I bought on sale at Walmart months ago. When I calculated how much garden soil I would need to fill up the greenhouse beds last year, I nailed it with fifty of the larger 1.5-cubic foot bags, so there's at least a slight chance that I will be in the neighborhood. I estimate I will have about five buckets of compost left over, which I will give away or eventually use.

I spread out all of the grow bags inside the greenhouse to see how much room they will actually take up in the open space on the north wall. Three of the five big 15-gallon grow bags are shown here, but only one of them will be permanently inside the greenhouse. I also have one 10-gallon, two 7-gallon, and seven 5-gallon grow bags. They will all be put to use.

With all these grow bags, I don't think I will have to buy any more big pots. If I need something, a couple of the 5-gallon buckets might get holes drilled in them. It will be crowded inside the greenhouse for more than a month, but eventually at least six of the larger pots and bags will move to our back yard. There also will be 15 hanging baskets inside until the weather warms up, then 10 of them will be moved to hooks on the outside of the greenhouse or to our house. I hope the inside of the greenhouse will be a sight to behold in late May just before everything starts moving out.

All told, I will have about 50 different plant varieties at the greenhouse and in our yard this year. That doesn't include any of the 50 varieties of succulents that may end up in the greenhouse or outside on our porches. As soon as I get the soil mixes to their intended locations, I'm going to turn the heat on in the greenhouse and start planting. With an average last frost date of June 9, that would be more than a 2-month jump on the growing season. My most-often repeated greenhouse saying is, "We will see."

March 23: I got my compost today. The guy with the Bobcat was not shy about filling up the back of my truck bed. I figure it is more than a cubic yard, so I may have way too much. On the other hand, the expensive bags of vermiculite ($10) I got at Walmart seem awfully small. I may have to adjust the mixes for more compost and less vermiculite.

On the home front, I cancelled the Garden Crossings order of Supertunias and Chick Charms Sempervivums due to travel plans in May making it uncertain whether I would be here to unbox. The Sempervivums can live in a cold, dry box for weeks, but that is not the case with tunias. I will buy Proven Winners Supertunias locally, and (after complaining about the viability of online plant orders recently) I just put in an order with Mountain Crest for Chick Charms and some other stuff on my wish list. So I will be reacting to another unboxing in about six days.

I looked over the selection at Home Depot and Walmart today, and it's not all the exact same varieties I already have but it is looking very similar. Mountain Crest has the stuff they don't. This is the order:

• Echeveria pulvinata Frosty - velvety coating.
• Echeveria Black Prince - leaves are dark burgundy, almost black.
• Haworthia retusa f. geraldii - translucent leaves bent back like thumbs.
• Kalanchoe humilis Desert Surprise - purple blotches and stripes on the leaves. My first Kalanchoe.
• Chick Charms Lotus Blossom - pink, crimson and creamy white leaves.
• Chick Charms Berry Blues - blue, pink and purple at different times.
• Chick Charms Appletini - apple green center with dark tips.
• Chick Charms Cosmic Candy - fine white cilia (fuzzy).
• Chick Charms Gold Nugget - a mix of vibrant red, hot pink, and gold tones throughout the year, the most famous of the Chick Charms line.

Unknowns Part 2

I split apart the Home Depot bowl I purchased yesterday and replanted the nine rosettes. The pots in the first image are two 3D-printed plastic pots flanking the original 5-inch terra cotta. I don't have a saucer for the terra cotta, so borrowed one from a 6-inch pot for the photo. Maybe it is my imagination, but the Crassula Ogre Ears (I've decided it can be nothing else) on the left already looks more green than it was yesterday. I don't think the yellow tinge is normal and maybe it sat in a box with no light for a while. I'm almost sure the plant on the right is a pachyphytum. It is darker than the Moonstone but the shape of the leaves and the look of the plant are very similar.

The Ogre Ears will go into my office next to the other Crassulas, and everything else stays in the garage.

As planned, I added one of the three Sedum-looking rosettes to the Montage Bowl. I took the Cuban Oregano out of the Montage to make room, and it had a little root on it so I stuck it into one of the other CO pots. I know CO roots easily but it's always nice to have confirmation.

The Bonsai Bowl received one of the apparent Echeveria rosettes and the so-called Sedum. I moved the Purpusorum to make room and it is now the centerpiece of the bowl.

The original bowl was dry, but not overly so. I'll wait a few days to water the pots. The Bonsai Bowl is still slightly moist from a watering a few days ago and I'll wait until it is dry. The Montage Bowl retains moisture too well and is still moist from a watering a couple weeks ago.

The Pachyphytum Apricot Beauty from the recent order continues to deteriorate and lose leaves. The main stem does not look healthy. I chopped a tiny 1-inch rosette from a side stem and am trying to root it. I'm not going to complain to the company, I will just never buy from them again.

On the greenhouse front, I put in an order for a yard of compost today and will pick it up Tuesday. To get ready, I did the following today:

• Dug up the two mum pots from the beds and filled in the holes.
• Dug up the two sage plants and stuck them in pots. Plastic pots are good enough until I figure out what to do with them. And see if they are still alive.
• Got rid of the straw that covered the beds all winter.
• Rounded up all my buckets in an attempt to figure out my situation for excess compost. My calculation is I will have a little bit left over. I might be able to give some of it away, but I probably will have to find (buy) 2-3 more buckets.

After I dug out the mum pots, here is the southwest bed aka the new onion bed. At right are the five alliums, which look good but show no sign of flowering. The three pots are chives which have been going strong for a few weeks. I will plant about 60 onions where the pots are sitting now, and I'll fit the bunching onions in somewhere.

Here are some mint and rosemary sprouts that "voluntold" for the cold hardiness test, and at right are the two sage that I dug up. The mint on the left is looking a bit wilted, but not from the cold. It was in a 4-inch and dried out, so I put it in a 6-inch and gave it a drenching. The 10-day forecast says lows will be not much lower than freezing. And of course, at night the greenhouse is usually six degrees warmer than outside.

With the sun shining today, it was 84 degrees inside and the fan was blasting. Somehow I've lost contact with the greenhouse AC Infinity controller in my phone app, but the controller still has its programming and the fan still starts when it is supposed to. The immediate problem is I lost the ability to do 24-hour temperature monitoring. I have ordered an additional Elitech temperature/humidity monitor like the one I have outside, but the downside of that is it is not connected to the internet and I won't have real-time monitoring. I have to go over there and download the data to my laptop.

I'm tired of technology that does not work, so decided I could live without internet connectivity. (Remember last summer, the internet-connected fan failed and everything roasted for about a week. Then in October, the heater thermostat failed one night. Fortunately it wasn't cold enough to freeze everything before I could obtain a replacement.) The cheap thermometer that came with my heater also failed recently, so the new Elitech replaces that also. If I had to do it all over again, I would get a cheaper fan with an analog temperature control. I ordered a second heater that will run on a separate thermostat and electric outlet, and it will be set a few degrees lower so it only kicks in if the other one does not. Hopefully I don't blow a circuit breaker if it doesn't work as planned and both heaters are on at the same time.

Bowl of the Unknowns

I'm going to have to get used to the idea that I will know what some of my succulents are, and I will have only a general idea about others. I take pictures so I can keep track of the which specimens have IDs and which do not and should not be allowed to vote. Today I picked up a 5-inch pot with six different succulents in it at Home Depot today for less than $6, $2 off regular price. It seems there are six different types, some with multiple rosettes for a total of nine distinct pieces. $1 for each type, plus a short terra cotta pot, bargain.

My best guess clockwise starting at upper right is Echeveria, Sedum, Pachyphytum, Sedeveria, Graptopetalum, and a Crassula in the middle. If that's 50% accurate, I would be surprised. I'm going to disassemble this and put a rosette of "Echeveria" and "Sedum" in the Bonsai Bowl, and one of "Sedum" in the Montage Bowl. I might give the "Crassula" and "Pachyphytum" their own containers, which leaves four pieces to go back into this bowl. The Crassula appears to be the variety Ogre Ears, but the coloration is off perhaps from the stress of being jammed into this pot. Another reason to give it its own container.

Altman Plants of Vista, CA is the supplier. I think they also supply other big box stores. I saw a similar product in a different pot at Walmart, marked with the same regular price.

In greenhouse news, I picked up onion sets at Walmart, $4 for an assortment of 100 white, yellow and purple. I gave some away because I don't have room for 100 onions in the greenhouse. The alliums are already growing in the southwest planter, so I'm going to designate that my onion/garlic section. I was going to put some flowers there, but those are now designated only for the southeast planter. The east planter will be strawberries, and the west planter will be tomatoes, peppers and a few other things. The bench and open area on the north wall will be lined with plenty of other stuff in pots and grow bags, and the 50+ succulents will be... somewhere.

Spring

The Mammillaria bocasana Powder Puff Cactus is starting to bloom. There are a few more buds in addition to this bloom. Nothing concrete yet from the other two little cacti.

I watered most of my plants today and noticed that the Rainbow spread out a little overnight and from certain angles gives some hint at what it will look like and what the colors will be. But the plant needs to grow out of the damage it was shipped with. Unlike the Apricot Beauty which lost its leaves in transit, in my opinion this one went into the box damaged, and they charged a premium price for it. I might patronise the other three companies again I've ordered from, but not this one. BTW, the Powder Puff Cactus shown above is the only cactus I've gotten online, from Mountain Crest.

Postal

Every time I do an unboxing of an online plant order, I say, "Never again." Today was no exception. I received the box from The Next Gardener, three days later than the USPS estimate. The box looked fine on the outside but inside was the usual scene of chaos. I would rate three of the six plants as initial disappointments. This includes the primary reason for the order, Echeveria Rainbow, the variegated variant of Perle von Nurnberg. It and the others probably will be fine in the long term so I'm not going to complain the company.

But I doubt I will ever order from them again. Rainbow cost $22.10, and for that price I think it should be more ready for prime time. It is a large plant and I believe it was damaged before it went in the box, not beaten up by the USPS. I had to strip about 15 dead/damaged leaves off of it and potted it up as best I could. Here it is with its cousin Perle that I got about a month ago. It's a bit lopsided after the cleanup but maybe it will grow out of it.

In the background of the above image is the Crassula cv. Buddha's Temple which also did not make a good initial impression. It escaped from its pot inside the box, and it has such a small, dry root system that it was top heavy and toppled over when I tried to put it back in. I'm not going to water the others for a few days, but I will water this one today to try to get it anchored.

Here are all six plants after the unboxing. At lower left is the Pachyphytum Apricot Beauty, which lost all of its leaves on one side during the transit. One good thing about having your succulents delivered by the US Postal Service is you always have lots of loose leaves that you can try to propagate.

In the front center is the Echeveria Linda Jean which arrived in OK condition except for a mangled leaf or two, and next is the top-heavy Crassula that refused to sit in its pot. In the back row, the Echeveria Purpusorums flank the Rainbow. Right out of the box, the Purpusorums were in the best condition of the bunch. I ordered two of them because I have fat fingers and didn't notice until later. I potted up one of them and stuck the other one into the Bonsai Bowl with the three unknowns.

After four experiences, I have to rate ordering succulents online as miserable. But I'm in the middle of Montana and it is the only practical way for me to get certain varieties, such as Rainbow. I placed orders with four different companies, and I'll rate Ramsey's first, Mountain Crest and Plants for Pets tied for second, and The Next Gardener bringing up the rear. Ramseys is the least expensive, their quality is as good or better than the others, and there were no disasters like the Apricot Beauty I got today or the Lovely Rose I got from Mountain Crest five weeks ago. Lovely Rose is still hanging in there, thanks for asking.

Except for situations like charging a premium price for a lopsided Rainbow, it's usually not the companies' fault that it is not a good experience. Shipping plants is a difficult thing to do, and having the US Postal Service as your carrier only complicates the process. (Plants for Pets used UPS.) I have one more plant orders that I am expecting. In April, Burpees is sending me strawberries. I'm not worried about the 25 bare roots, but I'm also getting one live plant.

I would like to patronize local stores, but (as I said) some varieties are only available online. Maybe I'll find Gollum at Home Depot, but most of these on my wish list probably are not there:

• Corpuscularia lehmannii Ice Plant
• Echeveria Elegans Mexican Snowball
• Echeveria pulvinata Frosty
• Echeveria runyonii Topsy Turvy
• Gollum Jade
• Graptovia Fred Ives
• Greenovia aurea variegata
• Kalanchoe humilis Desert Surprise
• Lapidaria margaretae Karoo Rose
• Sempervivum Virgil Ford

Also today, I potted up (6") two of the Monarda (Bee Balm) that I raised from seed. One more is still in a 4" pot. In addition to being a woody shrub it has herbal uses, and I want to put one of them in a barrel outside the greenhouse along with other herbs. The other one or two Monarda I might plant in my yard. Supposedly they are hardy.

The pepper plants are ready to pot up from seed starters to 4", that is assuming they recover from the infestation of aphids that I tried to smother with soap today. Others that might be ready to get 4" pots are the latest thyme attempt and some green onion sprouts. As I move up to larger pots, space inside the garage becomes more difficult to find. The monarda above took the place of two rosemary plants. They are under grow lights with a sliver of sunlight from the south window. The two rosemary along with two mint plants "volunteered" to move to the greenhouse to test their hardiness. I'm not planning on turning on the heat for two more weeks. The temperature isn't supposed to get much below freezing the next week or so, and I piled straw around them. If they don't survive, I've got plenty more where they came from.

Another tunia haircut

Most of my Aloe Vera looks abused due to overwatering, bad light and/or bugs, but I have one perfect little plant that has been sitting on an upper shelf in a garage window that has escaped all of that. It isn't growing very fast now, but I'm expecting great things once it moves to the greenhouse in a little over a month. Next to it on that upper shelf is Petunia #2, the cutting I took Nov. 15. It was becoming a monster and threatening to swallow the aloe. I knew something had to be done. If it was May and it was in the greenhouse now, I would give it a haircut, repot it, and hit it with fertilizer. But in the limited space of the garage, I don't want it taking up more space than it already is, so a haircut is all I was able to do. Here are before and after images of #2 next to the perfect little aloe.

Petunias are not annuals, they are "tender perrenials," which means they will survive in a heated garage over the winter and be ready to go outside again come warmer weather. I have the big Pentunia #1 pot that I kept from last summer, Petunia #2, and three or four plastic cups that contain cuttings from #1's haircut at the end of January. (BTW, #1 has grown about five inches since the trim six weeks ago.) I don't really want that many of this type of petunia, whatever it is. Some sort of purple-veined hybrid from Home Depot is my best guess. All of this is just practice. Propagating from petunia cuttings is something I want to be good at next fall when the Supertunias are about to get frozen.

I cancelled my Garden Crossings order because of uncertainty when the order would arrive vs. our travel schedule in May, but I want to get at least four Supertunias locally for baskets. With all of the succulents I've bought recently, garage space is at a premium and I will have to make some tough choices when the greenhouse heat goes off next November. I counted today and I've got 10 peppermint plants. I do not need 10 peppermint plants. I need about four so I can have something in greenhouse window boxes that the deer won't eat. And if they do eat it, I won't care. Some of the peppermint may get moved to a dark corner after Monday, which appears to be the date for the next succulent shipment unboxing. I should have known not to believe that crap from the USPS about delivery today, but I'm just a starry-eyed optimist. Of course after months of a mild winter, we are having a blizzard today and the heat pack I bought with the order is probably almost drained.

I anticipate the flower baskets with the Supers will be outside from June 1 to August 31, then they will take refuge in the greenhouse when frost threatens and survive in some form until mid-November. With that assumption, this is the plan:

• Don't wait until November, start taking tunia cuttings in September.
• Use rooting hormone.
• Take more than one cutting from each variety. If some of them don't prosper by mid-October, there will be time take more cuttings.
• The cuttings don't have to become monsters like #1 and #2, they just have to survive the winter in relatively small pots.

Macro

Fun with a macro lens. Some of these are new, some have been around for six weeks. Let's start with Lola.

It looked like Lola was sending up a flower stalk around Feb. 4.
Then it noticed, "I'm not in a warm place" and abandoned the effort.

Perle von Nurnberg is a bit more purple than Red Sky (next image).

Red Sky

Neon Breakers color reminds me of the previous two, but it also has the ruffles.

Raindrops had a rough transit but is looking better a month later.

The Trader Joe's no-name Echeveria is a perfect little rosette.

My first Aeonium, Floresens. Those aren't my water spots; I'm careful.

The Setosa will get even hairier and develop some color.

It all started when I wanted to get a jade.

Survivor

Every since a dried-up little ball rolled out of the Plants for Pets box on Jan. 29, I haven't known whether it was alive. Today there is proof that it is.

The parents to this little ball, three rosettes of Sempervivum arachnoideum, appear to have been damaged in the frost of Feb. 19, but I think they will make it. Unlike two other Semps which did not, and a couple others which might not.

The little ball measures about 7/8ths of an inch. I considered whether to try cleaning the debris off it, but don't think it can be done without damaging the webbing. Here is a picture of it Feb. 16. The webbing was thicker then and it was hard to tell if there was actual green underneath, but today there is no doubt.

The webbing on the plants in the parent pot is still to thick to see the extent of the damage from freezing, but I believe I see green in there. Wishful thinking perhaps. But in any event, the formerly-dried up ball is ready to take their place if need be.

Something new

I have 17 varieties of Echeveria because they are such nice little plants, but sometimes I need something new. I took an unexpected drive to Cody today to accomplish a task that took two seconds once I was on site, so to make the trip worthwhile I went by Walmart to see what they had. They had a really big Echeveria of a type I hadn't heard of, but I also saw this little Bear's Paw, Cotyledon ladismithiensis. After checking the interweb, it seems to be the most famous of the small genus Cotyledon. This one seemed really dry and almost limp, so I violated the Inviolable Rules of Succulents and watered it right after I potted it. Here's a quick phone photo just before it got water.

My spouse brought eight 4-inch terra cotta pots to the marriage, and I wondered what I was going to do with them. They seemed too small for anything. That was before I discovered succulents. I believe I now have 14 such pots, including one I purchased today for the Bear's Paw because I didn't have anything available. I have the gray one I just 3D printed, but it has been too windy to seal it with the clear enamel I use.

I won't even mention how many 6-inch terra cotta pots I have bought in the past nine months. It's a bigger number than the 4s. The plants have been a considerable expense in recent months, but the pots and the dirt add up also.

Bowls

I have two large bowls I'm using for random plants that need a place to live. In the 8-inch Bonsai, I've got just three things so far, the unidentified Echeveria, the unidentified Grapto-something (both extras from the Ramsey order), and an unidentified cutting that I got from my nephew. I ordered two Echeveria Purpusorums by mistake a few days ago, and the extra will end up in this bowl.

I have a little bit more of a plan with the 10-inch Montage. Starting at the back left and going somewhat clockwise:

• Oscularia deltoides Ice Plant - This is a spreader, and it is big enough now to take about half of it and put it elsewhere.
• Haworthia limifolia Fairy Washboard - Recently-planted pup, the only Haworthia to escape my office so far.
• Cuban Oregano - I stuck this in there just to fill in some space. If it gets too big it can go elsewhere.
• Senecio haworthii Cocoon Plant - Another plant where I could take half of it and put it elsewhere.
• Sedum adolphi Shooting Stars - Another spreader, I could re-allocate two-thirds of this.
• Echeveria Lilac Mist (center) - I got four rosettes of this, and put one of them in here.
• Crassula perforata variegata
• Rosemary, another filler that doesn't have to be here.

The two bowls may spend some time in the greenhouse, but I envision they will spend most of the summer on our patios. Many succulents want good light but not direct noonday sun. The front patio gets morning sun, and the back gets evening light. The locations are under cover so won't get rained on (much), and I can bring them inside if a windy downpour is expected.

I've been pondering whether to summer the succulents, about 50, in the greenhouse. The 50 I'm not sure about excludes the house plants (Haworthias, Crassulas, cacti) which definitely will not move, and the multiple pots of Cuban Oregano and Aloe which will be in the greenhouse for sure. It includes most of the Echeverias, Graptos, Pachyphytums, Sedums/hybrids, and the surviving Sempervivums (moment of silence, please).

The raised beds in the greenhouse are getting strawberries, tomatoes, peppers and flowers, and there will be strawberry baskets and various large pots/grow bags. I'm planning on setting up irrigation, so it likely is to get a bit humid in there, which a lot of succulents don't like. But if I keep them in the garage, they may get overheated. Here in the Montana foothills the humidity is usually quite low, and even when the greenhouse gets steamed up during a watering, it usually comes down quickly. And I'll try to set the sprinklers so they don't shoot water into the air. So I answered my own question, the 50 will be moving over there for the summer.