Sufferin' succulents

Earlier this Summer, I had a splurge down the garden centre...
(Insert your own Frankie Howerd/Kenneth Williams utterance here)

On succulents, madam. Titter ye not.

They looked amazing: each had a large rosette of fleshy leaves; one green & spiky, the other grey & rounded.

Sempervivum Calcareum

Echeveria Glacuca

Having not long created the eye-shaped bed in the middle of the garden, I'd already been pondering if I should theme it.
Low lying stuff? Certainly.
Alpines? Maybe...
Gravel garden? Could do...
These'll fit right in :)

Fend for yourselves

I have no experience with succulents, but I figured they'd be OK in our garden. Why such optimism? Well...:

• Some random interlopers have self-seeded into bits of the greenhouse frame, & seem very happy there,
  Plus
• The eye-bed is slap bang in the middle of the garden so it gets the most of whatever sun deigns to shine on us,
  Plus plus
• Our soil is ridiculously free draining - All that rain we've had these last few years? No flooding... well not in the garden anyway. The doors on the other hand...

The soil is not at all sandy. It's very dark. But the colour isn't from lovely composty loaminess, oh no... It's coal dust. They're still mining round here & I pull out a chunk of the black stuff every time I go weeding.

Will they cope? Who knows! Best bung 'em in & see how they do.

Some time later...

I checked on the succulents from time to time, & they seemed to be doing fine. Then about 2 months after planting, I was having a little weed of the eye bed, so gave them a bit of a closer inspection.

The green spiky one seemed happy as Larry. But the grey one.... the grey one was a different story...

Oh... now that's not right...

Oops. Now this pic doesn't do me justice - if it had looked like this I've spotted something was up immediately. No, what happened was: weed, weed, weed, fettle, hoe, hoe, knock, oop a leaf's fallen off... & another... oh dear... the whole top's off...

Clearing away all the loose leaves, the extent of the carnage became clear:

Food for worms... sadly

Yep, when the clean-up squad have moved in, such as those stripey grubs right & bottom of the main stem there, it's time to cut your losses.

I believe that children are our future

You might've noticed from the pictures at the top of the post that these plants both had a large central plant, with lots of little plants around the edge. The common name for these plants is Hen & Chicks - a bit of a leap of the imagination, but this is no time for semantic quibbling - Mum has died, I've got to think of the children. The children! Oh the humanity...

So, how does this work? Well the chicks sit on an umbilical cord of a stem from the mummy plant. But I've seen this sort of thing before, with the strawberries. They send out long runner stems, & then where the stems hit the ground, roots spring out & a new baby plant starts to grow.

Gingerly turning one of the babes over, I see this:

Lots of leaves, teeny roots

Woohoo! Roots! They might be teeny, but they're there alright. Which means I've got a fighting change of saving the babies. Right then, best get them rehoused.

Moving on up, moving on out

So what's gone wrong? Well I suspect that even though the eye-bed is so well drained, the plant was still just too soggy. & yes, this is pure guess work on my part, but I figure if I don't act now, all is lost.

The plan:

Move the kids into a pot

I can put it by the yard door so I can keep an eye on them. Plus pots dry out ridiculously quickly. Normally that would be a problem, but not with these fellas.

Make sure there's plenty of drainage

I took a pot & filled half of it with stones, crocks & pebbles. Not just the bottom inch or so; half the depth of the pot. The theory here is to provide the water to no excuse to stick around.

Then mixed some compost 1:1 with sand; yep, half compost, half sand. To be honest I think it should've been more sand, & may be the poor border soil rather than the compost, but I really couldn't send the babies to their new home on an empty stomach.

Sand & compost mix, plus lots of drainage

With a sharp knife, I careful cut the umbilical stem on each of the babies. Well, all but 1 as it had already broken free of its own accord - it clearly knew it was time to leave home.

I levelled the soil in the pot & then created a little depression for the base of each of the chicks, gently pressed each plant home. The fleshy leaves are deceptively fragile so I was extra careful so as not to damage them.

For the final bit of drainage, I surrounded the chicks with gravel. I figure that if they're up to their necks in pebbles, they'll be less likely to end up sitting in a puddle.

Rehoused, & happier..?

Hopefully they'll be fine. They've got a cold wet winter ahead. Fingers crossed they make it out the other side intact.