DanielMoser said: I hope I see a difference in growth this year.
My semps' recent "good" growth hasn't been about soil but about feeding. I've been in this location for over 6 years now and after potting up all about 200 semp cultivars in 2-4 inch pots with just morning exposure I've managed to keep 90% of them alive over the years. That's it. Not a lot of growth to the rosettes and not a lot of offsets (though I love
colonies of semps).
Last year I broke down and decided to make a schedule for feeding between April and Sept and keep with it. I know you are probably asking what about soil with added fertilizer?...buying larger rosettes to start with?... feeding very regularly throughout the 7 months?... etc. Well, I wanted to take into consideration my lack of space given that there's no ground to plant in with this townhouse of mine. And with the limited space and thus limited size of pots I was using, I didn't want huge rosettes or countless numbers of offsets to have to repot.
To compromise, I only purchased/grew small to medium sized rosettes (though a crazy gardener supplied me with the mutant, "Steel Appeal"), I used potting soil with no fertilizer additives and I did not feed the semps.
So in 2022, I started feeding but decided to go with a seaweed/fish fertilizer plant food that has low NPK numbers. I saw good results for my situation: more offsets to start a "colony look" and more growth of the small-med. rosettes. Let's see what this year brings! Sorry no pictures to show...you have to take my word for it
