Today, I finally got round to potting up my cacti and succulents that I bought last week. I always enjoy doing a bit of potting up and propagating stuff. I haven’t done much else with my gardening this week as I still have to go through my seeds and sort out what I have and then I can make a proper plan of what I want to grow over the next year-that will be one of tomorrows many jobs!

What did I pot up?

I have potted up the following:

• Portulacaria afra
• Echeveria ‘Cubic Frost Cristata’
• Howerthia heidelbergensis
• Mammillaria ‘Arizona Snow Cap’
• Mammilaria sp.-yet to be determined what species it is, as more research is required!

All these cacti/succulents got potted up into succulent and cactus potting mix and terracotta pots that were one size bigger than their original pots. You only need to go up one pot size as it takes time for the plants to grow into the new pot and if you use a much larger pot, the your plants can just sit there as the potting mix can be too cold or too wet (especially if you are too keen with the water), preventing new root growth (thus no new upper plant growth).

For me, it is quite interesting when I bring home plants from the garden centre. The roots on all the plants I potted up varied widely. There were a couple that had very few roots and some that were almost pot bound in their old pots. While some of the plants with fewer roots may have been put into those recently at the plant nursery, the big Mammillaria that I got didn’t seem to have any roots at all, so I’m going to have to keep an eye on that one! Provided I don’t drown them in water constantly, they should all do good over the next few months.

A note on terracotta pots

There are a couple of reasons why I chose to use terracotta pots. The first one is that I want to move away from using plastic pots as my current ons become degraded over time. I also like the look of them, and look good on my pario area. A feature of these pots is that they are porous-water does evaporate from them which allows plant roots to keep cooler in the summer than in pots made from other material. It also means that there is less chance of waterlogging. While this will mean that more frequent watering needs to occur, you should be checking the soil moisture in all your potted plants frequently anyway, no matter what the pots are made from (no fancy gadgets needed-you finger does the job as well as anything!

My other plants

Over this week, I have to say that I have lost four seedlings-this was on Monday when we had another stupidly hot day! All my others have hung in there over that heat and then the wet days since, with most showing signs of growth too. While it is a shame that I have lost some, that is a perfectly normal thing to happen and doesn’t mean you have failed! My carnations are still growing and are going to stay put for at least another week. I have also seen one seedling that has just germinated out of the cacti seeds that I have previously sown. That is really exciting. I really don’t know what sort it is at the moment as this is the first time I have seen a cactus germinate, but it’s exciting!

Weather

The weather this week has been annoying if I’m honest. Monday was ridiculously hot-it reached 35.7 degrees Celsius but felt like 41.1 degrees Celsius. Absolutely nuts, and I wasn’t happy that day. Since Tuesday, we have had rain. So far we have had 118.3 mm so far this week.

At the moment, it is sunny here, but I can hear the thunder coming and see the clouds creeping closer to us as I write, so we will get more rain at some point today no doubt!

That’s all for my gardening today, but I’m hoping that I’ll have time do more tomorrow.