My Summer Thrill: A Post About Succulents

I spend most of my work days daydreaming about being at home. Most of the time, the daydream’s setting is the porch.

Or in the kitchen cooking with the girls while I swoon over my succulents ^_^.

This has been my “thing” lately; well, the weeks I’m kid-less. Free time is spent reading succulent care blogs or Pinning Succulents I eventually want to possess. Or visiting nurseries (like during lunch on Tuesday and after work today) or Home Depot, like on Wednesday night with John (and then he and Jorge ruined my workout by convincing me to eat Wing Stop!!). Gardening just…soothes me.

I never thought I’d get into gardening and then I did when we moved to this house and I planted flower beds everywhere. Then the Great Hail Storm of 2012 hit and ruined it all and then I stuck to my little succulents I’d planted in 2011 when I had the kiddos paint terra cotta pots for them. Just recently I got back into them (succulents are okay with being neglected, but I kind of overdid it, heh) and wanting to grow them myself, from cuttings.

So I searched for succulent propagation blogs and found these two to be really helpful: Life With SarahB and Succulents & Sunshine

So far, I think I’ve been doing pretty well!

This batch were the first little guys to undergo my latest project. I left them in the egg carton so the little cut end would dry up. Not all of them made it =|.

I laid some dirt in the carton, laid them out and began giving them a spritz of water once a day, every day for about 2 weeks.

That little cactus actually hitched a ride from Home Depot to our house when I bought a few other small pots. I hope he’ll grow!

Here are the leaves with their roots and buds almost a month later (I took these photos today):

These are a few little buds that completely propagated on their own. I actually found this Ghost Plant bud propagating on the windowsill!

I put it in a small pot, along with 2 other buds that began to propagate on their own in my large succulent pot:

This little guy overgrew the little pot Emily had painted. I picked up this blue-green-yellow pot at that nursery I stopped at today and transferred him over as soon as I got home.

I added the teeny Ghost Plant that had propagated itself so it can hopefully, eventually fill in that side of the pot. I was happy to see the Ghost Plant had a new sprout on one of the stems, too.

So now I have my first succulent garden that I wrote about 3 entries ago:

I’ve since removed the Baby Toes, which I named Roger, from the pot. It seemed unhealthy when I bought it, but it just never got better and eventually it started shriveling up. I took such good care of my first Baby Toes and now I can’t seem to keep them alive :(.

My Donkey Tail Burrito is also having a bit of trouble. At first I thought it was too hot outside, so I moved the pot to the windowsill and it’s still dropping a lot of “beads”. My String of Pearls was unhealthy when I bought it as well, and doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I’m keeping my fingers crossed though. Maybe neglecting it a bit will help.

I had bought a few succulents here and there for the past couple of weeks. A pink/green Echeveria and a Gollum at H-E-B, a severely over-watered Zebra Haworthia from Valley Garden Center, and then the other few that I bought when John and I went to Home Depot this Wednesday. So I made Succulent Garden #2:

I’m so happy with them. I hope I can keep them all alive. I’m so impatient. I want the sprouts to grow and I want to know the big ones will be ok!

So there you go: a bit of my madness and my current hobby. I’d been in a funk the last weeks of May and early June (no idea why, either, it was just weird), but I’ve been taking this literally lately:

It seems to be working pretty well!