Semps

Today I took the four new Sempervivums to the greenhouse. Officially they are now "outside" plants and will never spend much time inside the house or even the garage ever again. Here in Zone 5a we should be prepared for -20, and Sempervivums are supposed to be hardy to that. But since I took the first batch of six over there at the end of January, the lowest temperature outside was 17 degrees two nights ago. Inside the greenhouse, it was four degrees warmer at 21, so they have not been challenged. It's not going to get much colder anytime soon, according to the forecast. The daytime temperature has averaged 51 outside and 80 inside the past two weeks. I think that is too warm for various plants which might be trying to hibernate, so I lowered the threshhold to turn on the exhaust fan from 75 to 72.

The four new ones have white tags because I actually know what types they are. The original six are still a mystery, except for the one in the large pot at upper left which is some type of Arachnoideum with the webbing on the leaves. Maybe when they develop some summertime color I will attempt to identify them. The other thing to notice here is I put gravel in the original small pots. I don't know whether it is useful, but it probably looks a tiny bit better. I use the soil screener to get small hunks of gravel, and am doing the same with small round stones at the house. I probably should use even smaller gravel/rocks, but what I've been using is already paid for. There still is a large pile of gravel from last summer at Spruce Lodge, and our house is surrounded by a few tons of small stones.

Anyway, here's to life in the unheated greenhouse. Besides the Sempervivums, there also are the two mum pots buried in the beds, allium bulbs which think it is spring and are poking through the surface (4 of 5 so far), three live garlic, two chive pots (one of which is starting to grow), and two sage which may not be completely dead. I put five green onion pots into the soil Jan. 21 but haven't seen any shoots yet. In a pot in the semi-warm closet at home, I have one onion that has made an appearance. I probably put 8-10 seeds in each of the pots, so that's a little disappointing so far.

I don't think the Semps are going to grow a lot until it warms up for real, but I think all of the older ones are looking good and the newer ones should recover from transit shock in the next few weeks.

Actually there is one Semp that got left behind, the little dried-up Arachnoideum ball that was loose in the first shipment box. I thought it might benefit from the warmer environment of my office as it was trying to root...if it is still alive. As I've said a few hundred times since getting the greenhouse, we will see.