Is this usual ,I only took them from the mother 3 weeks ago?

It happens...I hope you at least got one or two offsets that didn't do that so that it could carry on the line, especially if the mother bloomed too.

I have some doing that same thing right now. Sometimes surgery works to insure new productive offsets. Have you tried that yet?

Lynn, I did the surgery once and just got more bloom buds. I was going to throw the mother plant away after cutting off the 5 offsets but noticed new growth on the stem of the mother below its blooming head. So I kept the mother head with the new growth on stem but then forgot to water for a few days and I think the new growth dried out... and I may have lost them.
I have watered since and crossing my fingers that some foliage will survive.

Surgery ?

It sounds like I should have sterilized myself before entering the poly tunnel..

mick64 You have to be careful around Bev and Lynn they will have you doing so many things you never thought you could/would do.

Cinta, don't get Mick hopes up...

Anybody remember those posts by Eviesmommy and Twitch regarding surgery on mounding types and blooming heads for semps? Thought Mick could read those and have options...

Here's one from Twit: http://garden.org/thread/view_...

At the very least, remove the head of the bloom stalk as soon as you recognize it. Some semps will set some offsets on the (remaining) bloom stalk and some will not. Seems to be related more to the variety which will do that. I think surgery is the most reliable way to go, since it seems to take the cells that are triggering the flowering away from some of the divisions, allowing them to develop back into normal rosettes that regenerate with offsets.

Another technique, called "coring", is to remove the central growing portion of the rosette which causes the semp to develop offsets. One of these days, I want to try coring on blooming semps to see if that is a better and safer way trigger offsets on a blooming rosette.

webesemps said:Anybody remember those posts by Eviesmommy and Twitch regarding surgery on mounding types and blooming heads for semps? Thought Mick could read those and have options...

I just realized I should have tried out that new feature of being able to tag a person in forum posts so that they know I was referring to them for possible help like when I mentioned Twitch ( @twitcher ) and Eviesmummie ( @eviesmummie )

But Twitch came to the rescue anyway. Thanks Twitch!

Thanks for your advice ,but alas they are only common semps, I have another few hundred..

Remember the big semp on my profile picture ,it bloomed ,then all the offspring bloomed before I got my grubby hands on them, while they were still attached....

I know I should put this in another post but feel a bit guilty doing all the new posts....

I am doing a roof made of semps ,it is only a garage roof but my only problem is maintenance ,do you think if I put a board across the semps and walk on the board will they will be ok?

either that or I will have to leave a channel in the middle??/

I'm having the same problem - new roesttes blooming. I've not done surgery as I have at least one other Hester, and I'm not sure yet if all the newbies are going to bloom. I tried simple decapitation with my silverline and all I got were blooms. I decapitated and then quartered another semp and that resulted in some flowers and one new rosette, saving what was my only one of that type.

I like the new tagging thingie by the way, but I wasn't alerted to the post, or at least if I was I must have missed it?

Kate, it's because I got your moniker wrong. I typed mummie instead of mummy. And I was remembering you doing the decapitation thing and posting/including photo about it.

dunno if I like the word decapitated @Eviesmummy

Lol nor me, but it's cruel to be kind.......Honest! Oh and the tagging worked that time, I got a system message

Eviesmummy said: Oh and the tagging worked that time, I got a system message :)

unlike @webesemps , I can copy and paste no need for spelling..

IMHO, semps would not survive you placing a board on them,let alone walking on the board. I think you should plan on maintenance channels or rows between the semp plants. Perhaps on offering by "Steppables"such as a creeping mint or thyme might work between the semps.

Semps seem to be susceptible, at least initially, to "colony collapse disorder" (another name for massive blooming). I think this tendency would decline over time in an established colony as generational drift would eventually occur.

In an earlier post on another thread, I described the tendency of offsets to bloom simultaneously with parent flowering when attached to the parent. I think this is more likely to occur with types that have thick stolons to the offsets rather then types with thin stolons. I think a chemical signal diffuses through the thick stolon to the offset, triggering the flowering. As guard against this and as a propagation technique, you may want to take a pair of scissors and snip the offsets off of the stolon near the base of the offset. On thicker, healthier stolons,that may trigger the production of additional offsets while protecting existing offsets.