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.

Red Geranium

I took cuttings last fall of four geranium plants (at least three different kinds) and stashed them in the garage. All four survived, but the coloration of each now is very different. I crammed all four of them and some petunias into a big pot. The geranium at back left is almost chocolate brown, back center is dark green, and back right is very red. The geranium at left middle is a normal green.

Internet research indicates geraniums turn red from stress, which can include temperatures below 55 degrees. I heated the garage to between 50 and 55 all winter. Obviously not all varieties handle a chill the same.

The other occupants of the pot are descendents of petunias from last year's pot. The two with purple-veined blooms are cuttings, in other words clones. The red bloom at lower right is from a volunteer petunia that grew from seed. The only petunias I had around last year were the purple-veined ones, so I concluded that the color does not breed true. The plants hidden in the center among the geraniums and hanging over the front also are volunteer petunias, so we will see what color(s) their blooms are.

To the left of the big pot is the original petunia pot, which isn't looking great for some reason. It hasn't bounced back from its last haircut at the end of January. I predicted back then that is would need another haircut by now. Current working theory is alkaline water. It might be time to refresh the soil and turn that pot over to one of the two large clones, not pictured.

You always hear about how invasive mint is. I had one mint pot that was invaded by a volunteer petunia. I decided to dispose of that particular mint and also decided I could not save the volunteer due to the possiblity of fragments of mint roots mixed in with the petunia roots and taking over a pot like this. There is another volunteer petunia in a 'Velveteen Aromatic'™ pot. It has a couple of blooms developing.

April 17: I transplanted the last-mentioned volunteer to the big pot. This image shows three petunias with common ancestry and blooms of four different colors. The clone at left has two blooms, with one more purple and the other more blue. In the middle is the newest transplant with the red-veined pink bloom. At right is a volunteer with a red bloom. The blooms differ in color but they all have veining. At the lower edge of the frame is another volunteer, and it looks like the bloom color will be similar to the pink one.

Beer and Citrus

As I was wandering around Nana's greenhouse yesterday, I came across a Proven Winners plant labelled 'Cerveza 'N Lime' Plectranthus hybrid. It looks identical to the plant I have been calling Cuban Oregano and which I have been growing for more than 30 years. In January I found a Latin name for it, Plectranthus Amboinicus. So we are on the right track. Since Nana's is selling these for $7 each, I have a fortune in my greenhouse. On the left is Proven Winner plant, on the right is mine.

As I understand it, all the name 'Cerveza 'N Lime' does is establish a trademark. Mine does not smell at all like either beer or lime, and I realized later that I should have taken a sniff of the PW one. The Spanish word may be an homage to some of the inaccurate names by which this plant is called, including Cuban Oregano, Mexican Mint, and Spanish Thyme. It is related to mint, but its region of origin is East Africa and Southern Asia. Lime, perhaps because of its color. I could not sell the plants that I have been propagating for more than 30 years using PW's made-up name, but I could give my version a funky new name and claim it as an unregistered trademark. Registering the trademark with the Patent Office gives more protection, but it costs $350 and I doubt I will ever sell enough (if any) to justify that cost.

Here is a supersecret photo smuggled out of the greenhouse where the plants are being propagated. May I introduce Plectranthus 'Velveteen Hammer' ™, "Velveteen" beause of the fuzzy leaves and "Hammer" because...I don't know.

Try again. May I introduce Plectranthus 'Velveteen Aromatic' ™. I could add "variegata" to the name, but truth be told the faint yellow rims on the leaves are probably a nutrient deficiency and not variegation. I'll give them a feeding on Fertilizer Friday.

Later that day: I found another example on several succulent sites. It's called Plectranthus tomentosa 'Vicks Plant.' Google AI claims it is called 'Vicks Plant' because it smells like Vicks VapoRub. Uh, sure. It looks just like my 'Velveteen Aromatic.'

'Unboxing' Day

Customer service at Succulents Depot finally got back to me, and said it was OK to cancel my April 5 order as they were still working through a backlog caused by East Coast weather-delayed orders. There were some things I would do differently based on what I have learned in the past nine days, and this gave me the opportunity to start over. I have reordered some items from them (see below), but my first stop was Nana's Bloomers in Laurel to pick up an Echeveria 'Topsy Turvy' I had seen there a few days ago. 'Topsy Turvy' was the main reason for the original Succulents Depot order, and I ordered two of them. At Nana's, I picked out the nicest plant I could find as there were no longer any pots with two plants. There were other items at Nana's that I could not match exactly from the cancelled order, but I picked up two SunSparkler Sedums and a webbed Sempervivum. Cue my rant about unidentified succulents, but the Sempervivum is a nice-looking plant. It came with a tag that says "Beach House Mix Succulent Combo." Internet research only revealed that some company not worth naming (turnabout is fair play) sells trays of 50 assorted, unidentified succulents to greenhouses.

So there actually wasn't an unboxing, except of the new heater that arrived unannounced from China. There has been no tracking update since the 9th and still isn't showing that it was delivered. Here is the result of today's shopping. Front row from left, SunSparkler 'Wildfire' Sedum, SunSparkler 'Lime Twister' Sedum, Echeveria 'Topsy Turvy,' and the Sempervivum. Back row, the new heater, Supertunia 'Blue Veined' and Supertunia 'Hoopla Vivid Orchid.' "Wait what?" as my grandniece would say. Yes, I bought two more Supertunias. Either I'm going to have two fewer strawberry baskets, or I will have Supertunia baskets with multiple plants.

I saw a few 'Blue Veined' blooms and they resemble the petunia I got last spring. I don't remember where I got that one because I wasn't writing overly-long blog posts about plants then. However, I saw pictures of the Blue-Veined on Proven Winners Direct, and it looks much whiter than what I saw at Nana's. I'm looking forward to a comparison. Also, it seems like the known Supertunia blooms are larger than my legacy petunias.

I potted up all eight Supers in 6-inch pots. The original six were in biodegradable Proven Winners pots and they were starting to, you know, biodegrade.

I'm hung up on a trip we are taking in early May and how I am going to set up the irrigation to keep everything watered. It is conceivable that the Supers might live in those 6-inch pots until May 13, and the same for the strawberries that are scheduled for hanging baskets. I have enough irrigation tubing for me to string it up in the air to water the baskets, but I just don't know if I want to. Since I may have to work around several more trips during the growing season, I should just bite the bullet and do it.

BTW, I do have two baskets which already have some live plants in them — peas. One basket has four or five sprouts, the other only has one.

The 'Topsy Turvy' was not labelled, so there is the possibility that it is something else. But it fits the description perfectly, as far as I can tell.

Here are the items from the cancelled order and what I have done/plan to do now:

• Corpuscularia lehmannii 'Ice Plant,' not a priority.
• Crassula imperialis 'Giant Watch Chain,' not a priority
• Echeveria 'Atlantis,' reordered this, also ordered two of the similar Echeveria imbricata 'Blue Rose.'
• Echeveria runyonii 'Topsy Turvy' (2), got one big one at Nana's.
• Graptosedum 'Francesco Baldi,' still interested in this or something similar.
• Graptoveria 'Debbie,' reordered.
• Greenovia aurea variegata, my enthusiasm waned when I found out is is related to aeonium and is summer dormant.
• Sedeveria 'Silver Frost,' not a priority.
• Sedum SunSparkler 'Blue Pearl,' reordered.
• Sedum alboroseum 'Mediovariegatum' variegated, still interested if I need more sedum.
• Sedum takesimense 'Atlantis' variegated, still interested if I need more sedum.
• Sempervivum 'Hurricane,' reordered.
• In my Succulents Depot reorder, I also added a Mammillaria gracilis fragilis 'Thimble Cactus.' The Sempervivum survivor is ready to move out of the house, opening up a spot for another cactus on my office window sill.

The items that are not a priority were in the original order (frankly) to get free shipping. From Nana's, I didn't have to pay for shipping, just for gas to drive a total of 94 miles. And the great thing is, none of the plants were covered with dirt or looked like a grenade exploded next to them, at least not until I potted them up. In my Succulents Depot reorder, I didn't get enough for free shipping, but I decided I really wanted those 'Blue Rose' Echeverias and not everything else.

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. (Update: the Succulents Depot order has been cancelled and I have no immediate plans to re-order their Ice Plant.)

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 (had) 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.