Drama

After a false start and two long waits, I finally got a Succulents Depot box today. The clerk at the Post Office, where we have to pick up all of our mail, said, "This box has seen better days."

So, preparing for the worst, I cracked open the box. The Sempervivum 'Hurricane' was located where it must have taken the brunt of the hit, but it looked relative unharmed. Semps are tough. Actually there were two rosettes and one of them was partly out of the pot, but I've learned that you just pot those pieces up and eventually they will be fine. Here is the 'Hurricane' after potting up. The smaller rosette on the right is the one that was popping out of the pot. It has a tiny offset forming off to the right.

The highlight of the order for me was the Echeveria 'Blue Rose,' and I ordered two of them to improve my changes of getting a good one. One of them got a new 6-inch ceramic pot I ordered from Amazon. Due to the shape of the pot, it probably took twice as much soil as an ordinary terra cotta. I thought the 'Blue Rose' would go well with this blue pot, but it has a lot of growing to do to make this worthwhile.

I have been using the Black Gold Cactus and Succulent mix, but I didn't have much on hand so I opened up the Miracle-Gro Cactus, Palm & Citrus mix I got a few weeks ago on sale. Before looking at the labels, I thought that Black Gold had more grit and MG had more peat. The labels are not real specific, but I stand by my initial assessment. The amount of perlite or pumice in the MG seemed skimpy, so mixed it 70/30 with pumice. That made it more of the consistency I am used to with the Black Gold.

The Mammillaria gracilis fragilis 'Thimble Cactus' looked interesting, so it was in this order. The plant descriptions on Succulents Depot (like Ramseys) often have NO information, so I go to Mountain Crest for the details. "The stem segments fall off easily but readily re-root," they say. Good thing, because first thing I did was knock it off the shelf to the ground, and it lost four little segments. I potted up the main part in a 6-inch squat pot, and put the four little balls into a ceramic. I have four other ceramics from that set, and three of them have little cacti and the fourth is a leaf sprouter.

Succulents Depot makes a big deal about shipping plants bare root, but the only one that came that way was the Echervia 'Atlantis.' All the others had 2-inch pots. 'Atlantis' has some leaf damage it may grow out of eventually.

The other two items in the order were Graptoveria 'Debbie' and SunSparkler Sedum 'Blue Pearl.' Both have some growing to do and that's all I will say.

Summing up, despite the condition of the box, all of the plants were in survivable condition. Showroom quality, no, but I've come to expect that from plants that spend several days in the hands of the US Postal Service. Contrast that with this no-name Sempervivum that I got at Nana's Bloomers, which I think is showroom quality. This snapshot was taken when it was still in the nursery pot. Oh well.

The crushed box turned out to be not as bad as it looked, but there was more drama on this day. The original Pachyphytum 'Apricot Beaty' I received six weeks ago from The Next Gardener died, mostly, and they sent me a replacement two weeks ago. The pot had two stalks in it, and I potted them together. Today I noticed one of the stalks was shriveled, so I did an emergency beheading and the cutting is now in my office next to the cutting that is the only surviving piece of the original plant. The first cutting seems to be rooted, but comparing the two they actually don't look the same. Looking back at the image I took after the first beheading, the color and thickness of the leaves appear to have changed, so we will see whether these two pieces resemble each other more in a few months.

In the greenhouse, I got about 80% done with the irrigation installation, which will be four lines. I have the three lines arranged to cover the beds and baskets, but I need more sprinkler heads for the line that will water the plants on the ground and along the north wall. I haven't tested any of it yet. I know I am going to get wet as I adjust the heads, so I would rather do that all at once. That could be Saturday depending on when the Amazon delivery happens.

In the garage, I reconfigured some of my grow lights. I had Sansi grow lights on a shelf above LED tubes, and I swapped them. What it accomplished was giving the three big bowls their own shelf, although the smaller bowl doesn't get its own Sansi. There is some natural light, but the shelf is below the window sill so doesn't get the full benefit. I could move the shelf perhaps four inches higher to get more natural light and be closer to the grow lights, but currently the Purpusorum's flower stalk would interfere with that. I must say I like the way the Montage Bowl (left) and the Bonsai Bowl (center) are progressing. The Unnamed Bowl (right) has caught up some with the additions of the past few days, but needs something else to pop. There is a small flowering Echeveria languishing in a shared Home Depot 5-inch that might get the call soon.