Thijs.......
Laughing about the amount of bunny holes that will be left behind. Aren't parting gifts lovely?

Should I ever sell my house the front yard is going to look like the surface of the moon. All pits and potholes and a barren landscape. No way am I leaving 90% of my plants behind! A few...yes, but the majority no way! Too much blood, sweat, tears, time and money invested in it!

Although I will be kind enough to leave that Cow's Tongue p.pear and the inevitable monster plant A. weberii. New owners can enjoy all 10' x 6' of it.
Let's not forget those raised beds in the back yard. You know, the 3 interconnecting ones that I cemented together? If the new owner doesn't like them, I'll leave them a sledge hammer.

Glad you think the A. potatrum is o.k. It did overwinter in a pot and seemed to be fine all summer. Winter , despite covering, was hard on it. Happy to know it is thriving despite my ineptitude and will eventually become a lovely, happy plant.

If you look under my front window, right up against the orange- red pot is the A. potatrum. My partial shade-sun zone makes an 'L'. It goes from the bubble bed and extends about 2.5 feet past my front window. The rest is all sun the whole year and hardcore in the summer. Presently the A. potatrum is in 80% shade as that is the normal fall-winter pattern. Summer it will be in 50% shade.

I'm thinking I should move it more towards the front or perhaps put it back in a pot. It may not be receiving the sun it needs to warm up and revive. Of course if the sun is too intense there's shading but presently the sun is ideal. (See pic below. A. potatrum in 'corner' by pillar. I'll take a better pic this afternoon.)

Weather here has been insane. It was 83 yesterday and is supposed to be 86 today!!! (yep...read that right.) Tomorrow is 78---still real high for this time of year.

By next week it will be back to 'normal' with low to mid 60s and a few days flirting with 70. When I consider these mid-high 80 degree temps in early February, I cant help but think that is a foreshadowing of summer. Not boding well.





Have a good day.
AG

When you have a really huge cactus and you get bored with it (is that possible?) you can turn it into a Tillandsia rack:


(Berlin botanical garden)

Rùud

Nice! In the Phoenix Desert Botanical garden there are several large cacti where other cacti have found spots where the big cactus branches. Clearly seeds have been deposited by birds or other critters and have found a nice spot to root.

The photos are at home, but I have seen a prickly pear on a big multi-armed Stenocereus, and a Hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus) on a very large Cardon (Pachycereus Pringlei).

I fear here it is a bit too dry for Tillandsia to do well outside. We have some inside the house.

Thijs

chris1948 said:I'm getting ready soon to put quite a few of my leaf cuttings that are putting out some good sized rosettes into their permanent homes. Right now they're just in tiny 3" pots sitting on Echoscraps potting soil with small perlite for drainage. What is my best option for a good potting mixture for these?

Not sure if you got an answer Chris but don't be in a hurry to transplant rooted leaves until the rosette looks about the size of he pot. I start them out in 4 or 6 inch pots (the latter a community arrangement where I roll the dice with multiple leaves) and try to ignore them until they look crowded. I don't like pots under 4" because they dry out very fast. Anyway your usual well draining mix (half rock would be my recipe) should work just fine.

Baja_Costero said:

Not sure if you got an answer Chris but don't be in a hurry to transplant rooted leaves until the rosette looks about the size of he pot. I start them out in 4 or 6 inch pots (the latter a community arrangement where I roll the dice with multiple leaves) and try to ignore them until they look crowded. I don't like pots under 4" because they dry out very fast. Anyway your usual well draining mix (half rock would be my recipe) should work just fine.

Thanks Baja, no, I don't believe I did. Glad you replied because I was going to move some of these soon. Now I've been misting these heavily regularly vice watering them is that alright? Is that alright? I noticed I've lost a few that had some small rosettes though that may have been caused by days when it hit over 100 in the greenhouse the past few weeks.

Ruud,
What a beautiful specimen. You are fortunate that you had access to such a lovely plant and the opportunity to admire it up close and personal.

Weeds, weeds, weeds and more weeds. Yes, I finally got around to doing that weeding. I'll be at this a bit longer than I care for. Grrrrr!

I haven't checked this forum in awhile! Everyones plants seem to be doing ok! Unfortunately I have had a casualty, i lost a graft! basically the hylocereus went to mush! It hadnt been watered since mid september and had healthy roots with no sign of rot, the medium was completely dry and the scion was healthy. It was inevitable but still a lose. Other than that everything else has done fine!
Not counting my chickens just yet!

Hi sy,
Bummer about your plant but I'm sure you have lots more goodies in your collection and they'll bring some pleasant surprises soon.

Speaking of surprises, I received some the nicest today from my little guys and the aloes chimed in too. Unexpected blooms, growth and potential more flowers on the way for the humming birds.

First time flowers for this little guy


A repeat performer in bloom


Mangave v. 'Blood Spot' showing it's true colors and as happy as can be growing like a champ.


Aloe veras that have become a humming bird paradise and still producing more flowers.


A. ferox kicking into gear with its first flower bud this season. (Bud on far right.)


My newest and youngest plant, A. 'Golden Dawn' is joining the act too! Can't wait to see this one. (Very center of the plant.)


And the Euphorbias are off the hook. Growing bigger and bigger and doing a little light show of their own at the tops and sides.



Have a great day.
AG

Nice AG i like your A. Golden dawn One of my A. Ciliaris pups took on a deep red colour when i put it outside last year.

Here's a pic of it now back to green with one of the offsets double heading.

chris1948 said:
Now I've been misting these heavily regularly vice watering them is that alright? Is that alright? I noticed I've lost a few that had some small rosettes though that may have been caused by days when it hit over 100 in the greenhouse the past few weeks.

I'm not one for misting myself but if that's how you choose to water, it should work fine. The advantage would be that the moisture is regularly delivered to the surface of the soil where the baby roots are trying to find their way. Given the temps you describe, very small pots will be prohibitive unless you're really attentive with the water. A slightly bigger pot (say 4-6" my preference) gives you a bit more of a buffer before it does fully dry and the plant starts tapping its reservoir.

Sy, welcome back. That is a nice looking aloe (and it's interesting to see a pup dividing like that) but it's not Aloe ciliaris, which is a plant with a longer stem and longer, narrower, thinner leaves with very fine, almost hair-like teeth (from which the plant gets its name). The fine hairs along the backside of the leaves, where they clasp the stem, are supposed to be diagnostic. For more pictures look here

Climbing Aloe (Aloiampelos ciliaris)

and for what it's worth, here's my plant (probably a hybrid not the species but similar). It grows in a sort of sprawling mound. The botanists use terms like scrambling and rambling to describe the way Aloe ciliaris wanders as it grows.

Thanks Baja, if I consolidated them from the small 3" into larger 4" or even some 6" I have can I use the regular EchScraps potting soil mixed with medium perlite as before or should I use some of my cactus mix I have laying around mixed with perlite? If the cactus mix does this also need some small gravel mixed in such as aquarium gravel which I also have a couple of new bags of?

I think perlite and aquarium gravel should be more or less interchangeable in your mix. Between perlite, pumice, aquarium gravel or chicken gravel, lava rock (scoria), you are going to be fine with whatever you prefer. Why not try two different things side by side if you are curious about the difference between them?

The main thing is to have something in there to break up the organic component. I have used bagged cactus mix without rocks added and it actually worked pretty well for the plants I tried, because the mix had some bigger, barky chunks in it to start with that took a good long while to break down. If your cactus mix looks like that, the bark in there will serve a similar role as rocks would in breaking things up. If your potting soil is full of fine particles instead, especially peat, then don't skip the rocks.

My usual recipe these days would be about half pumice, just to be on the safe side, and also because I also include 1/4 cocofiber, which is super water absorbent. I don't experiment a whole lot with the mix any more because it seems to work pretty well for the various different plants I like to grow.

Thanks Baja, I was going to ask over in the Adenium forum one time about using coconut coir in the mix for when I pot my baby Adeniums next month but never got around to it. I just seem to get so confused at times about all the different ways you can mix up a potting soil and what's best, what's the worst and so on. Guess I need to firstly get out and start washing/sterilizing some larger pots then go from there. I'm glad the weather is going to be nice awhile except for the 3" or so of rain they're predicting for us the next few days.

Sy...........
That is soooool cool with your double Aloe. Keep a photo journal of it and post some of the visual growth changes for us. Thanks for the compliment on my A. 'Golden Dawn'. I don't know a whole lot about this plant but will be researching more about it. And yes, anything that changes color and doesn't die is really cool. Have some pics of your Aloe with the color changes displayed?

Baja.......fabulous plants as always.

Chris.........Sounds like things are warming up down there! It wasn't too long ago you were worried about the cold. Sounds like you're getting good advice so I'd follow through and I'm sure your plants will take off.

Some really cool Echinocactus that have just tripled in size in what seems to be overnight. I'm sure that's not true but the plant didn't look like that a little while ago!




Have a good day all,
AG

Thanks for the info baja I had it id'd as A.ciliaris but I have questioned that myself! I noticed that baby has stayed compact with short fat leaves while most of the other pups tend to have longer thinner leaves like the mother.







I find it has very few teeth and I can't find any fine hair.

The diagnostic feature of Aloe ciliaris (the fine hair-like teeth on the backside of the leaves where they clasp the stem) is on a part you can't even see on most aloes because their leaves are usually so closely packed together along the stem. If you can't see that part of the leaf on close inspection, it's not stemmy enough to be ciliaris.

I am really impressed with how well that mother plant is doing indoors. She looks beautiful.

Yea definitely no hair/teeth baja. I do notice faint straight lines on the leaves running all the way to the tip but they aren't noticable unless you get really close. maybe its Aloe Striatula? It looks to be popular and quite hardy in the UK also has a similar climbing/scrambling habit and I can confirm mine clumps at the base also with many offsets! I think I removed 20 or so when I bought it, it was a mess but after removing all of them I was left with a nice 5 pointed star shape.
While checking for the fine hair/teeth I see another little offset poking out



Edit: not sure how acurate that info is but here is a 1 minuit clip
https://youtu.be/A_Y_L5MQSFY

I couldn't say one way or another about Aloe striatula. Outside my experience. Presumably the flower will be informative.

Some propagation pictures here... first a solitary seedling aloe which I cored a couple of months ago has sprouted offsets. Third and fourth pic show what this clone looks like when it grows up (why I want more of them). The flower is bicolor red/yellow.




Finally here are recently sprouted Echeveria seedlings, along with a picture of the mother plant. Fingers crossed on this one!

Very nice plants one and all. Thriving like champs.

I did a little research on a plant I have that was originally labeled as A. 'Golden Dawn'. BB labeling strikes once again as that is not correct. From what I've researched and seen pictures of my plant is an A.'Goldilocks'. It is supposed to be a small to medium sized aloe that is stemless and solitary. Supposedly it likes full sun as it is a zone 9-11 plant.

Now there's full sun and then there's Arizona's surreal version of 'full sun'.

If anyone has this plant in my zones and/or area could you be so kind as to pop in or speak up. I would like to learn about your experience with this particular plant and its responses to 'full sun'.

Thanks,
AG

Plant with a starting flower.


A. 'Goldilocks' on left



Thanks
AG