My plants took a well-deserved break over winter, but this extended until recently. With watering and a few repottings only when absolutely necessary, I even acquired new plants and clippings at a lower pace.
This extended break was good for my calatheas, they look absolutely gorgeous, and I didn’t even repotted them once. Maybe I should leave them undisturbed for as long as I can. My biggest plant, Monstera Deliciosa, had a horrible stepback: root rot: I had to downsize the pot. Otherwise, my plants seemed to enjoy being left alone.
Although I still added some new plants to my collection, the change of environment gave me the possibility to have succulents.
First I got a few from a garden center I’m lucky enough to enjoy a nice discount. The second batch came from an online seller. And the third one, or rather the next four succulent boxes, came from swapping on a Facebook group I wrote about a while ago: Plant Kindness – The Gifting Group. I have to mention that one of these boxes was a gift, not a swap, because this group is filled with generous and kind people. Thank you, Nicky?
Although I had no clear idea of what I was to do with all this lovely lil plants, I only new I wanted to put into practice one of the many ideeas of succulent art I stumbled across social media. I found a cool branch in my garden that I want to turn into driftwood and use it as a container for them, but this project takes more time than I have patience. So, I roamed the charity shops for some sort of container for them, and I found a set of three metal supports for tealights (maybe).
My new containers can’t really hold soil without being spilt all over the place when watered, and I considered using a mesh, but time was of the essence, and I didn’t have any available. Since my garden is a bit on the wild side, I have plenty of moss under the grass and was able to fill all the tiny spaces with moss, turning my containers into kokedamas.
I spent an entire Saturday turning two balls of metal into succulent containers. I mixed a bit of soil adequate for succulents, sand, small pebbles, compost, perlite, and a bit of orchid bark. First, I added some soil, then added succulents through the holes in the metal until I filled the containers. Afterwards, I added fresh moss to keep the soil from drying very fast and give my containers a better look.
I used the third container for a lovely jade that was too big to be added to these mixed containers. In the process, I saved over a hundred leaves to be proped. Hopefully, by the time they grow into plantlets, I’ll turn the rotten branch in my garden into driftwood.
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