Hello, hope everyone is having a good holiday :)
I thought I'd post some updated pictures on how these small plants are doing. I removed the top layer of tiny gravel that I had put on to keep the perlite in place (and for aesthetics....I still don't like the bright white perlite very much...)
But the gravel was staying too damp around the base stems of each plant and I wanted the water to really only be at the bottom.
Slowly learning that this method seems to only be showing good results on plants that have a good system of roots to begin with. Anything with an already rotting or strange stem seems to rot off quickly in this but if there is a fresh stem, I seem to be able to catch it to try and reroot in my cuttings box.
My cubiformis has new flower buds on each side of it, two groups of flowers seem to be developing faster.
My Rhytidocaulon's are also growing pretty quickly in this, with tons of flower buds at once. I've never had this happen before, usually I'll get one flower or two in my previous soils and they would often dry out and fall off before opening. I'm really pleased to see so many flowers on these dead sticks. They're my favorite plant so I'm glad to see them doing well
This succulent that was doing really badly in soil seems to be coming back to life. It's dropped all of the dried leaves it had on it's lower half and has new growth in the top part-
It seems I have to add about two shot glasses worth of water every 4 days or so. I add Schultz Cactus and Succulent food to the water every three waterings at half strength.
Here are some other plants showing new growth for me, euphorbias, my small dorstenias, a ceropegia and my larger stapelia that is in a giant 12x12" box/pot. The stapelia had gone limp and soft when I had it in the pot of soil it came in. It's the first plant I put in this perlite system so apologies for how messy it looks. Luckily all the stems have stood back up over the last couple of weeks and put off a lot of new growth and tons of white roots down the inside of the pot.
The euphorbia pachypodioides that I thought had died a few weeks ago has become solid again and continues to put out lots of leaves each day so I think it survived the transplant into this new pot system.
This last plant doesn't seem happy. It did not have many roots when I took it out of it's pot of soil a week ago, so I cleaned the dirt and put it in the perlite and added only a tiny bit of water. Now it's leaves have gone red and when I look at it's roots, it has new white ones but everything is really dried out. I think I should have added more water. I'm going to try add water to see if I can save it but most of it's stems are limp and dried out towards the center where they all meet.
