Our long national nightmare

Succulents Depot finally got back to me on my April 5 order. They said the delay was due to an order backlog which built during East Coast bad weather and they were still dealing with, and said it was OK to cancel. So I did. I'm headed to Nana's Bloomers this afternoon in hope of them still having 'Topsy Turvy.' The cancelled order also included three sedums, including SunSparkler 'Blue Pearl.' I know Nana's had some SunSparklers but I didn't check which kind. I was looking forward to the Sempervivum 'Hurricane,' but will settle for another Chick Charms if Nana's has a webbed one I don't have already. As far as the Greenovia goes, I was having second thoughts because I found out it is summer dormant like its relative, Aeonium. Regarding the Echeveria 'Atlantis,' it turns out that I want 'Blue Rose' instead. It just seemed simpler at this point to cancel and start over, which might include a Succulents Depot order starting with the 'Blue Rose.' They have it in stock.

Other items in the cancelled order were Sedeveria 'Silver Frost,' Crassula imperialis 'Giant Watch Chain,' Graptosedum 'Francesco Baldi,' Graptoveria 'Debbie,' and Corpuscularia lehmannii 'Ice Plant.' Now I'll have to get by with only two unrelated Ice Plants. The two Graptos looked interesting and I may reorder them or something similar. The others were kind of just fillers to get free shipping.

Ice

The designation "Ice Plant" seems meaningless. Once all of my outstanding orders arrive, I will have three unrelated succulents called "Ice Plant," and two of them are not cold hardy.

This one is the Oscularia deltoides 'Ice Plant.' I acquired it at the end of February and put it in the 10" Montage Bowl. It's definitely not shy and I should divide it and move half of it elsewhere. It is not cold hardy.

The ice plants I have on order are Corpuscularia lehmannii 'Ice Plant" (not hardy) in the shipment from Succulents Depot that has been in limbo since the middle of last week, and Delosperma 'Fire Spinner,' a true ice plant that is hardy to Zone 5, expected to arrive Friday from The Three Company Store via Amazon. The 'Fire Spinner' has fabulous flowers and is part of my plan to convert at least one greenhouse bed to cold-tolerant succulents (including sedums and sempervivums).

While I was out in the garage shooting the Montage Bowl, I also got images of Crassula perforata variegata 'String of Buttons' (variegated), and Senecio haworthii 'Cocoon Plant.' The latter takes up a lot of space in the bowl and also should be divided.

While I'm waiting for the two examples of Echeveria 'Topsy Turvy' from Succulents Depot, I have to be content with the somewhat similar Echeveria 'Cubic Frost.' I think it looked a bit rough when first planted a month ago. The color has mellowed since then.

Finally, while I was finishing up I noticed the Haworthia retusa f. geraldii 'Star Cactus' which was potted up a little more than a week ago. I pulled seven pieces off of it before planting the main part, and I could have pulled a lot more. It is apparent from both color and size which is the main plant and which are the pups. Previously, there wasn't such a color difference. The flower stalk leads out of frame, but there are some pale pink flowers on the end of it despite getting squished during shipping. This is a single frame, not focus stacked.

Historic

Every hum-drum event these days gets the "Historic!!!" designation. By flying around the Moon, Artemis 2 did something never done in history before, at least since Apollo 17 in 1972. The meetings between the US and Iran were historic...but produced nothing. "ChiliFest cleanup underway after historic cancellation," reads a headline on a Texas TV site. Apparently a chili event got rained out for the first time in more than 35 years (which means it has happened before). Here's an event that has never occurred before in history: There will be an Echeveria in my greenhouse tonight. I trust the heaters enough to let one of the Purpusorums do a sleepover. I purposely chose it because I have two of them and, tag, you're it. The other one is in a bowl with other plants, and this one is a loner without a family. In other words, expendable.

I'm going to transplant the Purpusorum into a Southwest-looking pot that I've had for a long time, the pot that the Cuban Oregano in the image currently is occupying. I'll probably cut the tall part off the CO and plant the bottom in the outside barrel or a window box to see what it can do in real sunshine. It looks a bit yellow and needs a hit of nitrogen. I rarely fertilize overwintering plants because I don't want them taking over the garage. But now may be the time.

Moving the Purpusorum will free up the 6" squat pot for something from the Succulents Depot order, if it ever arrives. (Still no shipping notification, and they ignored my email today.)

This CO is three times taller than the previous one and is the biggest one that made it through winter. It has been in the west-facing window in our bedroom. Even that prime location didn't give it enough light and it is a bit etoliated (stretched). My ideal CO, which I have achieved once in more than 30 years, is a round, compact ball. That historic plant was in the ground on the south side of my house during the summer, and did not survive the first frost. The greenhouse should have enough light to accomplish that again, which would be historic.

I'm not sure what to do with this big thing. Whatever it is will involve pruning. I could try an overall 30-50% trim and see if it will bush out, but what I have done in the past is take cuttings and just start over. I already have six cuttings several months old and I really don't need more, but I feel like I should do something historic with that long, straight central stalk. One "problem" with CO is it is just too easy to propagate. Just take several cuttings, stick them in soil, and odds are most of them will develop roots and grow. And grow and grow.

I tried to take some historic images of a Supertunia today, specifically Vista Jazzberry. Even the best cameras have difficulty with flower colors sometimes. Backlighting didn't really work here, I'm sure I will try 1,000 more times this summer.

Post about nothing

It looks like the greenhouse is rounding into shape from this image. But nothing of significance is visible here. The strawberries have not been received and planted in the bed just below the camera. The flowers in the first bed to the left have not come up. Those are just mint pots sitting on the edge. The onions in the next bed have not come up. The vegetables in the far (west) bed have not come up (except maybe some radish sprouts today). None of the ten coir baskets have been planted with Supertunias or strawberries.

There is progress, for sure. Some of the seeds on the heat mat have started to make an appearance. That would include marigolds, alyssum, and tomatoes. As mentioned, radishes or something is coming up in the salad area aka west bed. I culled half of the mint and some other redundant plants. I planted the geranium and some of the petunia cuttings that made it through winter in one big pot. We will see how they get along. The new heater from Amazon is on a slow boat from China, so I bought one at the local Ace and set it up as the primary. It's on the ground, left of the blue Lowe's bucket. I'll probably retire the one I bought last year (bottom of the image) since it does not seem to be pumping out much heat.

Meanwhile, back at the garage, I took cuttings of the six Supertunias as insurance against disaster. I'm already wondering if the Jazzberry cutting is too small.

As I briefly alluded to a few days ago, it seems like I buy a bag of cactus and succulent planting mix every week at Ace Hardware. I just ordered 20 lbs. of pumice which I will use with my existing soil to make succulent mix. I don't know if it will be cheaper this way, but my medium-term goal is to convert the southwest (onion) bed to a hardy succulent bed, which would require replacing a large percentage of the soil with something like pumice. Longer term, perhaps convert the west bed also, leaving the southeast bed for conventional flowers and the east bed for strawberries. In the hardy succulent beds, I would plant sempervivums, sedums and delospermas. ...I talked myself into it, I just ordered a pair of delosperma 'Fire Spinner' ice plants from Amazon. As I said a few days ago, anyone can plant tomatoes and peppers.

Day at the Beach

I let the Supertunias out of their cage for about an hour this morning. It wasn't for hardening off since that will be 6-7 weeks from now, but I just wanted to get them outside. It was mostly sunny with a temperature of 69 and a light breeze. (Ignore the humidity reading on the thermometer; it is never accurate. It's 25% today.) From top left, Honey, Vista Jazzberry, Priscilla; front row, Latte, Vista Bubblegum, Royal Velvet. The size difference between the blooms on the Vistas and the original Supertunias is already apparent. Vista Jazzberry has much smaller blooms compared to the Latte.

I will have six baskets, three locations. If bloom size is a consideration, I would pair the Vista Jazzberry with the Vista Bubblegum, but they are similar colors. Maybe a contrast would be better. I just picked the ones I wanted and didn't give much thought to pairings. The difficult pairing may be Honey. But since they will each be in their own basket, it will be easy to swap them around. Matching would be a bigger deal if I was putting three different varieties in one basket.

Even though a couple of them need some recovery time after the trauma of shipping, you can already tell that these hopped-up mutants are ready to go. Royal Velvet may be the frontrunner for the first to burst out of its pot, followed by the Vistas.

The Coleus also made it outside, and into its permanent pot. After an hour of sun, it took its place in a west-facing window in our kitchen. On nice days, I can quickly pop it outside on our back patio. It will spend time at the greenhouse, and might even end up outside next to the greenhouse due to its fabulous attribute of being (slightly) toxic, so hopefully deer resistent. I'm also still trying to sprout Coleus from seed, so if that ever works I will have more than this one to attempt to overwinter as a true houseplant.

Since I've started taking care of more succulents, I've become much more aware of well-draining soil. Looking back, I can't believe I have been able to keep my aloes alive for so many years with the mud I planted them in. With the Coleus, I used regular potting soil augmented with about 1/3rd cactus soil. Unlike succulents, you don't want to let them go completely dry between waterings, according to Mr. Sheffield. I don't have conventional house plants, but I still watch the escapades of Mr. Sheffield (not his real name, it's where he lives in England) on YouTube's "Sheffield Made Plants" just for the entertainment value.

I moved Sempervivum 'Appletini' to the greenhouse, joining eight other Sempervivums already there. Here are images of two that I got a few days ago in Billings, a calcareum from Home Depot, and a Chick Charms 'Powdered Pastry' from Nana's Bloomers. That leaves five Sempervivums in the house, four Chick Charms and the little survivor.

Calcareum:

'Powdered Pastry':

On a concerning note, I don't believe the heater ran properly the last two nights. It got down to 34 and 37 the last two nights. The heater is supposed to kick in at 42. I tested it and I could feel warmth coming out, but not forcefully. If the new heater doesn't arrive by Wednesday, I have an old fire hazard space heater I might have to use.

Tunia ICU

After I got the Supertunia shipment yesterday, the plants went into the garage closet under the grow lights and got a drink. They look a little better today than they did right out of the box, and even have a few new flowers coming into bloom. They aren't quite ready for macro images; maybe in a couple days. There's still a lot of dirt on the plants, and it is just about impossible to brush it off the fuzzy leaves. I tried judicious use of the squirt bottle and that helped a little bit.

I'm trying to decide when to plant these in their baskets and hang them in the greenhouse. I returned the recent heater purchase to Amazon today, and I'm not going to put these in the greenhouse until I receive another heater. I have too many things going not to have a backup, and I'm not going to add the Tunias to that. The shipping status says "shipped" as of Thursday, arriving at a carrier facility at 4:07 am. It doesn't say in what country the carrier facility is located, but a little internet research indicates China. Amazon says it might be here Monday-Wednesday. Another consideration is the forecast says we will have some colder weather returning in a week with lows around 20 next Friday and Saturday. I might skip past that also. That pushes the planting out to Sunday, April 19. I think the grow lights are bright enough to carry the Tunias until then, so that is the plan. All they have to do until then is heal up and start growing.

The Coleus will get potted before then. I have a green ceramic pot that will work. I ejected a Cuban Oregano from it, but I forgot to bring potting soil home. Tomorrow.

No Regerts

I went to the local Ace Hardware today to buy my weekly bag of cactus and succulent soil, and checked out the plant section as I always do. They had a Gollum Jade that looked a lot better than the one I potted up a few days ago. Of course they did. It was $9, versus the $7.98 I paid for the Home Depot pot that contained the Gollum and three other succulents. The $9 would have been the better deal. Something similar happened in February. I bought a Jade at Walmart, and a few weeks later saw a bigger, nice one at Ace. I bought that one; I decided to pass on today's Gollum. No regerts, as they say.

I did take some images today of recent succulent acquisitions. These got the full focus-stacking treatment, starting with Sempervivum Chick Charms 'Cosmic Candy.' As I wrote a few days ago, I saw some nicer ones at Nana's Bloomers after I got this one, but this one isn't bad. It just doesn't have the masses of offsets yet that the others did.

Chick Charms Lotus Blossom:

Chick Charms Appletini:

Chick Charms Berry Blues:

Chick Charms Gold Nugget. Even though it isn't as hairy as the others, it still has dirt stuck in the leaves from the recent planting.

This is the Gainan's acquisition that I am claiming is Graptopetalum paraguayense 'Ghost.' It is not potted up yet because I'm planning on using it in a hanging pot with some sedum coming from Succulents Depot, IF they ever send me my order. According to their FAQ, it should have been sent two days ago, so I don't know what is going on.

Because I haven't potted it up, it is top heavy in its little container. After shooting its portrait in the kitchen, I set it on a shelf back in the garage and 20 minutes later happened to be looking in that direction as it keeled over and fell three feet to the concrete floor. Amazingly, there was no apparent damage. Tougher than a Pachyphytum, for sure.

I also want to take a look at some plants I've had for a while. Remember Graptoveria 'Lovely Rose'? It had a harrowing journey from Mountain Crest in February and lost a lot of leaves in transit. Two months later, it is looking like it is supposed to. I think it has doubled in size.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that both Echeveria Purpusorums were sending up flower stalks. But then they took divergent paths. Now, the one in its own pot has a short, stocky stalk (that might be drying up) and the other in the Bonsai Bowl has a long, thin stalk.

The Echeveria 'Blue Curls' is sort of a forgotten acquisition. It needed to recover from shipping, and after a month I'm still not sure what it is going to look like eventually. Obviously it does not have the regular structure of 'Neon Breakers.'

And finally, another update on my best result so far with leaf propagation. This little unknown is now 1/2 an inch across. The big leaf isn't shriveled but is floppy, so the day is approaching when the little one will be on its own.

We have Winners

The much-anticipated box from Proven Winners Direct arrived today containing six Supertunias and a Coleus. I've done enough plant unboxings recently that I wasn't too horrified by what I saw. It will take a while to get all of the loose stuff out of the leaves on a couple of the plants, and a few of the containers were cracked.

Worst off were the two on the left, Honey and Latte. Cleanest was Royal Velvet at lower right. The other three are Vista Bubblegum, Vista Jazzberry, and Priscilla. The Coleus ColorBlaze Wicked Witch is in good shape except for a spot of dried schmutz on one of the leaves. I'm going to keep an eye on local Supertunia availability and decide if it is worth the hassle of online ordering in future years. Points to consider:

1. If I buy a Supertunia at a local store, I can select one that is not covered with dirt and doesn't have a cracked container.
2. But none of the local stores have them in stock yet.

I placed them under the grow light in the garage closet, the warmest spot in the garage, and gave them a good dose of water. The next question is when to put the tunias in the baskets and hang them in the greenhouse. It will be at least a couple days. The Coleus will get potted up as soon as I evict a Cuban Oregano from a ceramic pot.

Also today, I potted up the presumed Crassula 'Gollum' from yesterday's Home Depot bowl purchase. Here it is on the left, with the presumed Crassula 'Ogre Ears' from a Home Depot bowl a couple weeks ago. Similar but different. (Also notice that 'Ogre Ears' is no longer a sickly yellow.)

After I potted the 'Gollum' and put the remainder of the Home Depot bowl in a larger bowl I recently purchased, I realized there wasn't much there. In the new bowl, there is a dark Echeveria (?) in the middle, three examples of what I'm guessing is a large sedum at the bottom, and two pieces of something with fat leaves at the top. In all, there were seven plants, four varieties. In the bowl I got a few weeks ago there were nine plants, six varieties. But I got the 'Gollum.' I'm not going to buy any more variety bowls this year unless 'Doris Taylor' (a fuzzy-leafed Echeveria) is staring up at me.

If the Succulents Depot shipment ever arrives (still no notification), I will put one of the two 'Topsy Turvy' in there, along with a cutting or two of sedum and any targets of opportunity. There's a couple of Haworthia cooperii pups that I haven't dislodged from their cup yet that can go into a variety bowl. None of the sprouts from the propagation trays are big enough to transplant yet. My first Jade cutting from more than two months ago seems well anchored in a 4" plastic pot, but hasn't gotten any taller.

I acquired two 9" flat bowls with saucers yesterday. Actually they are dinnerware originally from Target and not designed for plants. They were only $5.17 at Goodwill, after senior discount. They had plenty of coffee cups, but none of them spoke to me. I have to drill holes in the bowls to turn them into planters. The depth is not quite 1.75 inches, which is a bit shallow, but I'll try mounding the soil. If they don't work for larger plants I can use them to replace my plastic propagation trays.

Impatience

I have been incredibly impatient in my acquisition of the plants that will go into the greenhouse this season. I started ordering seeds and plants in December, and started some seeds not long afterward. I just didn't believe the local garden centers would have what I wanted to plant at the appropriate time of year, early April, in other words NOW.

Seed starting has been a lot of time and effort. Some things have worked, some have not. I have tried coleus and basil multiple times and got the seeds to sprout, but they never thrived. Now I'm trying to start seeds on a heat mat in the greenhouse, coleus and basil included. I'm hoping natural sunlight gets them past the sprout stage.

I have acquired a lot of succulents this winter, and I wonder three weeks into spring when some of them are going to start, you know, growing. The four Sempervivums that survived the February freeze are turning a little bit greener, but they haven't gotten any bigger. They are sitting in the greenhouse and I gave them a good watering recently, so they should be getting the full effect of longer days.

Not all of the garden centers in the Billings area are open yet, but I took a trip today anyway to find what I could find. I started at Gainan's just to see where they were on the Supertunia front. I wasn't going to buy any because I'm getting my Proven Winners Direct shipment tomorrow. (Yay!) The expense of plants at Gainan's is one reason I don't place confidence in the local retailers. I didn't see Supertunia individual pots or in baskets, but they did have baskets with calibrachoas which I believe were Proven Winners. There were two price points for the baskets, $90 and $140. They were the same size, so I guess the difference was the plant selection. When I saw those prices I became more secure in my plan to order Supertunias from Michigan and make my own baskets.

As I have said before, it drives me nuts that Gainan's and others have nice-looking succulents and don't bother to have ID tags on most of them. But I did spot a four-stemmed succulent in a 3" pot that I am fairly sure is a Graptopetalum paraguayense 'Ghost' or something closely related. My order from Succulents Depot includes several sedums that I want to put in hanging pots, and I think this long-stemmed, branching 'Ghost' (or whatever it is) will be a good addition to the pots. I thought it reasonably priced at $6 even if the ID was just a semi-educated guess. The cashier, apparently not believing that anyone could get out of Gainan's for only $6, tried to charge me $12. I convinced her of the error of her ways and got it for the correct price. It is shown in this snapshot with a small Home Depot variety bowl I acquired a few hours later.

The Home Depot bowl was back to its regular price of $8, versus the $6 for the one I got on sale a couple weeks ago. I picked this one mainly for the Crassula on the left in the image, which I believe is Gollum. There's also a dark Echeveria (probably) and several thick-leaved somethings, but the impulse purchase was based on the Gollum. It resembles the Crassula Ogre Ears I got in the previous Home Depot bowl, but there are enough differences that I'm confident in the ID. I'll pot up the Gollum and distribute the unknowns to different bowls.

Walmart and Lowe's also had some variety bowls, but Walmart's were rather sad-looking and Lowe's were $14. There was an interesting-looking dark sedum at Lowe's, but it had bits of white fuzz on it. I don't know if I have ever seen a mealybug, but maybe I did today at Lowe's. I have enough aphids; I don't need a new pest.

Also at Home Depot, I got this Sempervivum calcareum. It is a fairly standard burgundy-tipped species, but the reason I got it is there are seven offsets forming. From what I can tell, in the calcareum species there is this variety that doesn't have an additional name, and about a dozen named varieties. When I potted it up and put it on the shelf next to the winter survivors, that's when I really noticed that the others have not grown this spring.

My final garden center stop was Nana's Bloomers near Laurel, MT. We've been driving past it on our way to Billings for years and never went in. During my recent plant acquisition activities, it was closed for the season. It opened a few days ago, and my reaction to finally going inside was "Whoa!" One of the first things I saw was tables and tables of coleus. As I said, I've been having trouble starting them from seed. I included a $12 coleus in my Proven Winners Direct order just so I would have ONE as I'm trying to get more to grow. Nana's was selling them for $7. In a different building they had four-packs of smaller coleus. There weren't quite as many varieties and I'm not sure of the price.

In the same greenhouse as the bigger coleus, they had a very small table devoted to succulents. Alas, most of them were not tagged, but they had about six very nice plants that were easy to identify as Echeveria 'Topsy Turvy,' $7 for a 4-inch pot. 'Topsy Turvy' was the centerpiece of the the Succulents Depot order which will ship any day now (I hope). I ordered two for $4.15 each, but they are smaller than what I saw today. (One of Nana's pots had two medium-sized plants instead of one big one.) Maybe that is a wash. But then there were the succulents that did have ID tags, the Sempervivum Chick Charms, $7 each. I paid about $12 each for two individual pots at Mountain Crest. I saved a bit by getting the trio ('Cosmic Candy, Gold Nugget, Appletini) for $14, but Nana's had about eight 'Cosmic Candy' pots that were 10 times better than what I potted up this week after splitting up the trio. They had several 'Gold Nugget' pots that were a bit better than what I ended up with after the split. To add to my collection, I decided to get a 'Powdered Pastry' because I have grown partial to Semps that have webbing and/or lots of cilia. And, like the calcareum, it has a lot of offsets.

If I had known Nana had 'Topsy Turvy' and these Semps, if I had been more patient, my online ordering history would be different. From what I saw in the other buildings at Nana's, my seed starting history also would be different. I just planted seed-starter 6-cells with alyssum, coleus, marigold, marjoram, tomatoes, stevia, basil and broccoli. I could have gotten all of these already ready to plant (except maybe the stevia) today at Nana's. Their coleus look great; my previous attempts have topped out at a 1/4 inch. As a plant propagator, I'm having an existential crisis. We are barely into this season, and already I'm sure there will be a lot fewer seed starting attempts in the garage next winter and a lot more money spent at Nana's next April. I also learned yesterday when visiting Nana's that there is no need to travel the extra 18 miles to Gainan's.

Nana's had some Proven Winners varieties, but no Supertunias that I could find. They did have the competing Wave petunias. It's just trivia at this point pending receipt of my order tomorrow, but it would be nice to know for next year if they carry Supertunias. I'll visit at least once more in a few weeks even if I don't really need anything, and contrary to my usual demeanor I might even ask questions. I'm thinking my propagating next winter will include Supertunia cuttings, the usual Cuban Oregano, aloe, and rosemary, and not much else. I'll need the room for my exploding succulent collection, most of which will not overwinter in the greenhouse.

With my trip today, all I managed to do in the greenhouse was pot up the two Semps and water everything. Except the Semps. They weren't real dried out like some of the online orders I get, so I'll give them a few days.

More planting

Today at the greenhouse, I planted borage, nasturtiums and alyssum between the stakes I placed to mark the strawberry bed. I planted borage in three 5-gallon grow bags that will have strawberries, and planted dill in a 10-gallon grow bag. I potted up a donated tomato plant in a 6" plastic pot pending its final location either in the west bed or a bigger pot.

That's about it for inside direct seeding. If anything doesn't come up, there will be time to try again, or try something different. I realized today that I'm going to have to start watering every day. All of the beds and several of the grow bags are planted, the peas are in their baskets, the Supertunias arrive Thursday, and the strawberries arrive soon. With succulents this winter, I got used to not worrying about watering every day or every week. We have several trips planned in May and June, and I've got to get the irrigation set up.

I have flexible pipe for the hoops to use with the west bed row cover, and I almost got started on that today. But when I compared the 1/2" pipe to the 1/2" brackets, I realized that the pipe measurement is an inside diameter. I ordered 5/8" brackets, which will arrive Sunday. I did manage to relocate the inside trail camera to a permanent location today, and it is no longer in danger of getting smacked by a window. Thus ends the construction update.

I really need to use a better trail camera for the outside location. What I have there now is my cheapest and crappiest one. The only good thing about the Coleman camera is the mounting kit that came with it, which I used inside. On one hand, most of the shots are of the lodge guests running around and I don't need pictures of them. On the other hand, I'm hoping for moose and I should get something better there. And I always like to see a huge flock of turkeys pecking their way past.

When I got to the greenhouse today, there were three deer napping under the tree right next to it. Alarmed by my presence, they slowly got up and wandered one tree over to resume their relaxing. They aren't afraid of me. They are just waiting for me to plant something they can eat. There are four window boxes, two grow bags and a barrel outside, and supposedly they don't like marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, alyssum, cilantro, sage, mint, onion, thyme, rosemary and bergamot, which is what I am planning to plant. However, last year they registered their dislike for marigolds by yanking them out of the dirt and spitting them out. I got new, even more toxic marigolds this year and we'll see how they respond to them.

On the succulent front, I repotted the Sempervivum Chick Charms trio. They all got terra cotta pots, the Gold Nugget into a semi-fancy 6", the Cosmic Candy into a standard 6", and the Appletini into an 8". Succulents experts everywhere will chide me for using pots that are too large. Gold Nugget does look small in its pot, but should grow to 5 inches and produce offsets. The other two do not look small in their pots. This is just a quick snapshot, but Appletini in its 8" is sprawling now that it is free of the other two.

If the pot was smaller, those runners or offsets (I still don't know what to call them) would be hanging over the edge. Also, note the volunteer petunia photo bombing on the left. Just as in February, an offspring from last year's hybrids is producing a red flower instead of purple.

Succulents Depot still doesn't have a shipping date because they have to prepare the plants for boxing up as bare root. I've been sketching how to allocate pots, and a couple of Cuban Oregano might find themselves giving up their current accomodations. Rationalizing the entire CO/mint/aloe/rosemary/petunia/geranium situation needs to be done because it's a tangled mess right now. I kept this stuff alive in the garage all winter hoping SOME of it would make it through until spring, and way more than enough of it did. In particular, the CO and mint grow like weeds. Sad to say, we're talking compost bin.