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 an initial disappointment. 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 was not damaged in shipping, but I had to strip about 15 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 good condition, and next is the top-heavy Crassula that refused to sit in its pot. In the back row, the Echeveria Purpusorums flank the Rainbow. The Purpusorums also were in good condition. 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 and the other three tied for last (Mountain Crest, Plants for Pets, and The Next Gardener). Ramseys is the least expensive, their quality is at least as good 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.

I'm not even saying it is the fault of the companies 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 two 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. And in May, Garden Crossings in Michigan is sending me 12 varieties of Supers (Supertunias, Superbenas, Superbells) and five varieties of Sempervivum Chick Charms.

I would like to patronize local stores, but (as I said) some varieties are only available online. Highlights of my wish list are:

• Corpuscularia lehmannii Ice Plant
• Echeveria Elegans Mexican Snowball
• Echeveria pulvinata Frosty
• Echeveria runyonii Topsy Turvy
• Gollum Jade (probably available locally)
• 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.

Eight of the 12 flowers I'm getting from Garden Crossings the second week of May are Supertunias. There also are two each of Superbells and Superbenas, but I'm not sure if I will attempt anything with them. 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 12 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.

More pictures

I've posted a few images of the recent Ramsey order but still had 13 to do. I shot 11 of them today using focus bracketing, shooting 24 images of each at various focus points. I stacked as few as eight images and as many as all 24 to get the final results. I still have to take a shot of the Bonsai Bowl which contains the two unidentified extras. I also included a couple shots from the greenhouse of the four healthy Sempervivums and the "Spring has sprung" alliums.

I'm now aware of a significant limitation of focus bracketing in macro photography. With a mostly-flat surface like a coin being shot at an angle, it works great. With a subject like a plant which has leaves in front of other leaves, the process can not bring a back leaf into focus where it is close (line of sight) to a front leaf. When the back leaf is in focus, the front leaf is blurry and that blur covers part of the back leaf. You can see it in most of these images, for example the leaves at about 2:00 in the first image. I think the AI in Photoshop helps a little bit but sometimes makes things worse, as it did with the Sedum Jelly Bean stack. I had to clean that up a little bit.

With these plants, the problem can be minimized by shooting from a higher angle, which I should do anyway with something like the Cubic Frost to better show off its structure. I also could shoot with a smaller aperture, but as is usual in photography there are tradeoffs, namely longer shutter speeds and less blurring of the far background which you do not want to be in focus. For all of these images, I stopped down from the lens maximum aperture of f/2.8 to f/4.0, but that had minimal effect.

In no particular order, the recent additions include:

Echeveria Setosa Var. Deminuta, a fuzzy Echeveria.

Echeveria Blue Curls, there is some leaf damage on this from hitting the edge
of the pot it was in, it looks more red than blue. We will see how it develops.

Echeveria Lilac Mist, came with four rosettes, I pulled one off and
put it in the Montage bowl. I seems a bit more green than when I got it.

Echeveria Compressicaulis, a more upright Echeveria.

Echeveria Chroma, it shifts colors with the seasons, I have high hopes for this one.

Echeveria Cubic Frost, weird leaves, an overhead shot would do it more
justice. There are three distinct rosettes and I may divide it at some point.

March 13: Here's that overhead shot of Echeveria Cubic Frost.

Sempervivum Strawberry Kiwi, my first Chick Charms.

Graptosedum Alpenglow, colorful, can trail.

Sedum Jelly Bean in a 3D-printed pot.

Aeonium Floresens, my first Aeonium.

Sedum Firestorm.

I did stop at the greenhouse today. It's only three weeks until things really start happening there. The four Sempervivums who survived the Semperpocalypse still seem fine. The allium has some limp leaves, but all the interweb advice is that these do not need much moisture. My moisture meter says the surface is dry but there is moisture down deep. I resisted the temptation and did not water either the Semps or the allium.

I did it again

Even though I acknowledge that I already have enough succulents, I can't help but check the online stores to see if some of the rarities have come into stock. I found Echeveria Rainbow (the variegated Perle variant) in a 4-inch pot at The Next Gardener for the low low price of $22.10 and put together an order to reach free shipping at $49. Unfortunately I noticed two seconds after hitting the button that I had two Echeveria Purpusorums, the red-spotted variety that has been out of stock at Mountain Crest for weeks. Oh well, rather than mess around with changing the order, one will get a pot and the other will be prominent in the Bonsai Bowl.

This Rainbow image is downloaded from Mountain Crest, which has been out of stock of 2-inch pots (list price $14.99) for as long as I have been checking, but has 4-inch pots for $29.99. I guess paying more than $2.50 per plant (typical price at Ramsey) makes me a collector.

Other items in the order are Pachyphytum Apricot Beauty (self-explanatory), Echeveria Linda Jean (very dark), and Crassula cv. Buddha's Temple (stacked leaves). So I need to find five pots, and I currently have only one terra cotta available unless some more of my frost-damaged Sempervivums die (three are lingering). I moved the two unknowns from the recent Ramsey order to the Bonsai Bowl to free up two more terra cottas, and moved a rosemary that I had been raising as a succulent (4" green ceramic, cactus soil) to a plastic pot. I also was going to put the Trader Joe's unknown Echeveria into the Bonsai Bowl, but it looks so perfect in its 4" green ceramic that I just couldn't. Instead I printed a gray pot with the same design as the other two I printed, but 20% larger. Here's a portrait of Echeveria Trader Joe's in the pot in which it will stay. There's a little bit of scarring on the underside of the leaves from hitting the rim of the 2.5-inch pot it was in formerly, but other than that it is a perfect rosette:

I have been remiss in not posting an official (non-blurry) portrait of Echeveria Neon Breakers, which I've had since Feb. 27. The coloration looks like Red Sky and Perle, and it has ruffles. Here it is with the plant tag that I 3D printed. The letters are probably twice as tall as they need to be, but I'm still learning how to do things. I'm not going to tag absolutely everything, but it will be in the dozens.

I heard about The Next Gardener in a YouTube video. As might be expected, all of the retailers I've been looking at are in California, many between LA and San Diego but several further north. I don't want to live in the People's Republic of California, but I envy their weather for raising succulents. The Next Gardener supposedly is in Fallbrook, CA, but some of the tracking information they provided made me wonder where these plants were actually coming from. Their address is a PO Box, and their shipping partner is Noblepicks, which sets off all sorts of alarm bells in the Google AI overview. Let's just say I'm glad I'm not ordering a laptop getting shipped from China.

March 12: USPS tracking showed that they got the package in Fallbrook yesterday and left San Diego early this morning. "Delivery" is scheduled for Saturday, so I hope the 72-hour heat pack holds out. We don't actually have any sort of home mail delivery (I never heard of such a thing before I moved here) so I have to pick it up at the Post Office. The temperature is OK through Saturday, but plunges Saturday night. If I am unable to pick up the package Saturday, it should be inside the heated building and not sitting on a truck somewhere. I hope.

March 17: Received three days late. Fortunately the plants survived, but I hate the USPS. We rejoiced when Amazon started delivering their own packages in our little town instead of turning them over to the Post Office.

Leaf bowl

Whenever I have a loose succulent leaf, or a cutting (intentional or unintentional), it goes into the leaf bowl. It started out as a white plastic pot in the garage, but when I moved it inside to get more warmth I switched to an 8-inch Bonsai pot. In the last week or so it has stretched beyong the boundaries of the pot into seven littler pots. The Bonsai pot is really too nice to get stuck with this duty and I'm going to convert it into a smaller version of the 10-inch Montage. But this is what I had starting today, demonstrating various stages of success.

At the upper left is the Bonsai pot. The five narrow leaves at the top are Little Jewels that seem to be developing roots. The next leaf is one I took off Lola just a few days ago and is in better shape than this image conveys. Next is a jade leaf that has been in there for a long time and doesn't seem to be doing anything. Just below that is the spiked aloe sprig, same story. The bottom part of the bowl is miscellaneous leaves with not much going on. At center is the pup I found buried in the Haworthia Cooperii pot I received yesterday. The white-tipped shoots below that and on the left edge also are from that pot. I'm letting those dry out and will plant them in 2-inch pots in a few days. The variegated square fell off of a Crassula perforata variegata about 10 days ago and I hope it eventually sends out roots. Nothing yet.

To the right is a 4-inch pot with String of Bananas pieces I got from my nephew. I think there are some little roots developing and I'm trying to keep those nodes in contact with the soil.

At lower right is a small bowl with three more Little Jewel leaves and one other random one. All are developing roots so I gave them their own bowl.

In the rectangular plastic tray are, from left, a piece of the Crassula Capitella Campfire that wasn't rooted well in the main pot, an unknown leaf that is sprouting, the jade cutting that finally seems to be developing roots, a cutting from one of my nephew's larger plants that has a little plant developing on the end, and the small pup from the Haworthia Cooperii that I divided today.

The leaves do not need water. If they root and produce a little plant, they get their moisture and nutrition from the leaf until it is shriveled up. After I took this photo I did spritz the jade cutting, the Crassula plant, and the String of Bananas. The first two are plants, not leaves, and the last one doesn't have thick leaves to draw from. I think the little roots growing from each of them would like to find at least a little bit of moisture. My theory, it might be totally wrong.

As mentioned, I want to put the Bonsai pot into production with real plants, so I 3D printed two small trays to hold the 2-inch pots and transferred all the leaves to the rectangular tray, without soil. I get all my succulent information (or a lot of it) from Australian YouTubers, and Kat @SucculentGrowingTips says the soil is not necessary at this stage. She waits until both roots and tiny leaves develop before putting them in soil, and only one of mine meets that criteria now (upper right in the rectangular tray). If some of these plants keep developing, they might end up in the bonsai bowl for real, although if I rely just on what is shown here it might lean heavily toward Little Jewel propagations.

Pups and 3D Printing

I need pots and saucers for all of the little plants I've been accumulating, and I've been trying to find alternatives to just buying more stuff on Amazon. Three Haworthias occupy ceramic coffee cups with holes drilled in the bottom, and I just got a 3D printer. I printed two versions of the pot shown below, this first one (with the new Sedum Jelly Bean) with Jade White filament.

The other version of this pot was printed with "white-brown stone" filament. As it turned out, in bright light that means light pink with some flecks. In lower light, it does sort of look like the description. That pot got put to use today. I split up the Haworthia limifolia Fairy Washboard, which had three pups (two huge, one tiny) growing out of it in its little coffee cup. The big pups are shown here, and the small one is out of sight to the right.

When I dumped the cup, only half of the soil came out with the plant which isn't surprising since I planted it just a month ago. The roots appeared very healthy, but the soil was still moist a week after the last watering, which concerned me. The risk of using glazed ceramic instead of terra cotta is it does not dry out as fast, which could cause problems with succulents. I also noticed that the big 10-inch ceramic planter (aka "The Montage") isn't drying out very fast. I need to be especially careful with ceramic. This is what the cup dump looked like, with the big pups on the left and the little one on the right.

It took a little bit of effort to snap off the big pups, but I had courage from watching an Australian manhandle his haworthias on YouTube. Here is one of the big pups in The Montage between the Ice Plant and a Cuban Oregano cutting. I stuck the CO and a rosemary cutting into The Montage just to fill up space and I wasn't sure they would stay there. When I tug on them there is some resistance, so they might have rooted already.

Here are the main plant in the 3D-printed pot, the little pup in a 2-inch plastic pot, and the other big pup planted back in the ceramic cup. I also stuck a stray chunk of root into the little pot. After watching the Australian YouTuber, it seems like any little chunk might sprout into a new plant.

The Haworthias are on the front lines of my 3D printing efforts so far. I am using three coffee cups now, all with Haworthias, and I 3D printed saucers for them. The saucers I had been using were all too tall and hit the cup handle. Also, I broke a saucer for one of my small ceramic pots, and replaced it with a simple 3D print. Maybe as I get better I will replace the saucer with one that has a blue rim, like the original. Unfortunately the Hawortha attentuata Concolor (coffee cup) and the Haworthia Zebra (ceramic pot) have not produced any pups yet. I've had them less than a month; yes, I'm impatient. I received and potted the Haworthia Cooperi yesterday in a coffee cup. This is one of those that has the translucent leaves. It came in a 2-inch pot and it looked like they took a plant from elsewhere and jammed it in there. I found a couple pieces under the main plant, and these are now drying and I will try to plant them. Here's Cooperii's portrait in its coffee cup.

As I get more filament colors, I will be printing different designs in the 3.5- to 5-inch range. For anything bigger than that, I will continue to go with real terra cotta or ceramic. 3D PLA filament is not designed to last long when exposed to moisture, so I did hit the pots and saucers with some clear Rustoleum enamel to perhaps slow down any deterioration.