My favourite propagation trick

Stopping echeverias from growing over winter is not easy if you keep them inside; it is too warm and they just wont go to sleep.  The results in leggy growth, which can totally spoil the look of rosette style plants. Take this little clump, they were lovely compact plants at the end of last summer, and are now all leggy.

Top cutting allows you to re-root the top. It is a simple way to keep plants in check, but it is also an opportunity to produce multiple new plants.  Echeverias especially will produce new plants off the stem if the base is left in the pot.  My favourite trick is to use the legginess to produce a really clean top cut and leave the maximum amount of plant in the pot.  I simply strip the middle section of leaves giving me a nice clean area to cut, which I do just above the leaves in the lower section.

The top sections now have a nice bit of stem, and the base has lots of leaves to encourage offsets.

If you are really keen you can even keep the leave you stripped off the middle, if the echeveria will produce new plants that way. My OH pointed out that we don't really need more plants, but who can resist propagating when they get the chance?

2011 a very strange year

At this time of year it is no surprise that there are lots of posts looking back over the previous year and I was trying to avoid the same here. Today however was a glorious day, one of those lovely crisp winters days, with blue skies and some winter sun.  It was a balmy 14 degrees in the garden and 20 degrees in the cold frame and shed.  It was this that got me thinking about 2011 as it could not be more different than this time last year. 

Many people will think of last winter as a terrible one, we had the earliest snow on record, and almost a month of cold weather before christmas.  But with the new year came a change it warmed up and London had almost no cold for the rest of the winter. We then had a very early spring with a hot (by UK standards) March - May. Then of course the summer arrived and it was a true English summer, cold and wet.  I mentioned before how cold the summer was, the nights especially with only about 4 over the entire summer when you cold sit outside without needing to wrap up. With the end of summer came the sun, who would have thought it.  We had an amazing Autumn; hot, lovely warm evenings and it went on and on. So long in fact that even in November when we should have been into winter, it was still lovely and warm. So into winter and the end of the year, the warm weather continued with only one or two nights below freezing. So all in all it was extremely mild and had a LONG growing season.

2011 more than any year showed why growing succulents in the UK is so problematic.  Compare us to the rest of Europe (and world) we do not get any real cold (or at least I don't) yet plants tend to struggle more in the UK than else where.  The reason comes down to two things; the fact that summer can be a total non event and the wet.  Most countries may have the odd colder or wet patch in summer, but in general manage at least one extended period of hot dry weather.  This year we had no period in the summer with more than one or 2 days of hotter weather. As for the wet, it is not the rain in the summer, but our snow being so wet that does the damage. (Strangely this time the problem is because we are not cold enough to keep snow frozen).

The strange year did continue teaching me about growing succulents in the UK and confirmed some of my theories. The main ones being:

1) Most agaves and aloes do not grow without summer heat. I have kept a close eye on my plants over the year and noted which have grown and which have just sat there.  Most just sat there, many only started growing in the Autumn when they should have been slowing down.

2) Using fleece to keep the snow out of the crowns of plants was enough to avoid the damage I have seen in warmer winters. This only works given that my minimum temps are only around -9, but the difference between plants that I cover with fleece before snow and those I don't is huge.

3) As I have said before, watch your plants, both for problems and how they grow. For me part of the fun is experimenting, learning and letting the plants show me how far I can push them.

The very mild winter continues here and looking in the cold frame many plants continue to flower and are looking good.  Fingers crossed 2012 wont see a return to this, but if it does it will no doubt continue to teach me more about how far I can push my long suffering plants.

To over-pot or not, that is the question.

A couple of months back I did a post on search for the perfect plant pot. It's not just aesthetics that are important when thinking about keeping succulents though; the most common discussion is terracotta verses plastic. Something I think is as important is the size and shape of the pot as it is another myth that all succulents do fine with restricted root systems. Getting the pot wrong can really slow the plants growth down, which in some cases can be an advantage but not if you are actually wanting your plants to grow.

I have said it before and no doubt I will say it many more times: keeping a close eye on your plants, whether it is watching for signs of pests or disease, their water requirements, how they cope with climate etc, ultimately gives you much healthier plants. There are plants that like to be pot bound, those that need deep pots, and those that need as much root space as possible. Ultimately it would be great if this information was available in books or online, but until then you often have to learn through trial and error. I have found with my plants that yuccas like deeper pots, agaves don't mind being pot bound in full or half depth pots, aloes respond to over-potting and echeverias there is no hard and fast rule. But there are always exceptions to this.  Agave montana for instance like to have root space and grow much quicker in the ground than in pots. This may be as much due to their requirements for more water than most agaves and bigger pots dry out much slower. The plant in the photo is now almost twice the size of a second plant bought at the same time but kept in a pot.

With aloes I tend to start by putting them into one of three groups.  The tree and very large aloes like aloe plicatilis or aloe speciosa need plenty of root space.  The large rosette style vary the most; aloe saponaria likes big pots, while aloe zebrina and aloe striata cope with restricted root growth. Then the small and new hybrids like aloe snowflake and the Kelly Griffin hybrids tend to be fine in the half height pots.  One sign they may respond to over-potting is to look at the roots when you re-pot. The photo on the right shows the roots of an aloe mawii that despite being re-potted in April was already showing roots though the bottom of the pot.  This weekend I took the plant out of its pot to have a look, the pot was already almost totally roots. I re-potted it into a much bigger pot as a test.

 Whenever I over-pot a plant I always watch it closely to see if I notice any quicker growth.  There is a line between providing space for root growth and ending up with root growth at the expensive of top growth. So I'll keep a close eye on the aloe mawii for the next year or so to check that it does indeed grow quicker. Now it is in a nice pot I can also keep it out as a feature. It took me a long time to track down having seen photos of adult plants and the unusual flowers that stick out horizontally from the plant.. I am looking forward to seeing how it develops.  This is one you can stress and in low water / bright sun conditions it turns an lovely red colour. Right now it is one of my favourite aloes so I wont mind giving it pride of place for a bit.

Apart from speed of growth the other area where pot size may make a difference is in producing offsets.  There are some people that think that restricting root space means plants produce more pups,  others say over-potting encourages it. For me the jury is still out; I have plants that pup profusely and others that don't pup at all and I am a long way from being able to say how pot size effects this.  The only way pot size effects pups for me is in easy of removing and spacing.  But as I tend to remove pups at the start of each spring when I re-pot this doesn't make much difference. I would love to hear if anyone has noticed anything one way or another.

Of course water and climate usually have a far bigger effect on the speed of growth than pot size.  But in the UK where we don't have the very hot summer, or intense sun light every little bit helps.