🍄 It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening. You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not.
It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening. You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not. - W.C. Sellar
🍄
The bliss of gardening on my little piece of African soil. A year-by-year record of the progress in my old garden. My "new" garden of 2000sq.m. started in 2004, and ended when we sold our smallholding in 2017 and moved to the Dolphin Coast in KwaZulu Natal. Now "my garden" consists of a postage-stamp-size mostly-indigenous succulent garden and it always amazes me how supposedly drought-resistant plants do so well in this tropical coastal region.
Wednesday, 18 May 2016
Just before winter, tightly packed
Take some Echeverias (E. imbricata), plant too many in one terracotta pot, have lots of rain and you have a scene of each plant doing its best to be the biggest!
I have found E. imbricata to be a fast grower, producing healthy plants and actually spreads like wild fire. Although succulents are renowned for the fact that they can grow in poor soils and are drought tolerant, this Echeveria thrives in a good, rich potting soil and lots of water, as long as it also gets lots of sun.
Unfortunately they are not very frost tolerant and every winter I bring those that are in pots into the house for winterizing. This is not ideal, as they tend to get leggy searching for more light and results in me cutting them down and replanting them every spring. Yep, I know that sounds a bit excessive, but the alternative is dead or frost-damaged plants that hardly ever recover before the next onslaught of winter.
Labels:
echeveria,
echeverias,
imbricata,
tightly packed,
winter