The Succulents and Pottery Compulsion

My daughter Noe got me interested in succulents in early 2016 and ever since we've been on a quest!!! Naturally with so many new plants around, we needed pots to put all of them into. The typical pots you can buy from the big box stores just don't have character that suits these incredibly interesting plants. So we've both been making our own pottery. And now we're branching out into other plants - Aeroids, Orchids and Citrus!!! Check out what our green thumbs have been doing!!!

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

New Gymnocalycium mihanovichii

I am a sucker for these purple moon cactus (that aren't grafted - I'm not a fan of those at all).

This one was rescued from Home Depot Iwilei - I swear those employees don't know that you shouldn't water cacti everday... Anyways, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Cool plant regardless if it needed rescuing or not!

Waimanalo Nursery Surfing - Once Again and Geobunga

We had another long day out and about on Sunday. Music for the kids was the main reason we were out on the other side of the island, but since we were there we went ahead and checked out a couple of the nurseries. We all got some succulents from Once Again (Noe got two Adeniums, I got one Adenium with a bulbous base and another succulent I haven't gotten the name of yet, La and Marlon both picked up an Echeveria).

Then we went around the corner to Geobunga to checkout the ti plants (La's new favorite which used to be her old most hated plant).

A bunch of fuzzy water lilies. Checking out nurseries is always fun!!!

Kalanchoe luciae in Bloom

The Kalanchoe Flapjack and Watermelon are flowering with a vengeance.

Both have been pumping flowers for a over a few weeks now - took a long time for the flower spikes to finally open up, but when they did - non-stop action (did I just say that???). Too bad these plants will die off once the flowering is all done.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Schlumbergera buckleyi

I picked this plant up in the sale racks at the NEX Garden Shop - can you guess when??? Yup - after Christmas was over.

Since I was repotting epiphytics, I figured I should get to this one as well. This and the Dog Tail Cactus are living in the upstairs lanai to get the proper lighting.

Selenicereus testudo

I got the cutting for this cactus as another hitchhiker (maybe 8 months ago???). It has had significant growth since and I went ahead and repotted it today.

I trimmed off one arm as it got damaged while I was repotting it - also it was the one arm that was hanging downward before I decided to repot it. Some articles on line say this likes brighter, direct sunlight - but like most other epiphytic plants, I think this does better with bright shade. I repotted using orchid mix and relocated it to the upstairs lanai (where the other 'bright shade' plants are staged).

Shades of Purple

I was walking around the planter benches, looking for mealie bugs to squash and I noticed these plants with a nice shade of purple filling in. One is a Leuchtenbergia principis I bought from the Iwilei Home Depot. It hasn't grown one little bit since I brought it home a couple of months ago. The books say it is a slow grower so I guess this is another plant that will teach me patience.

The other one is a Opuntia of some sort - these were hitchhikers on another plant I bought (maybe even the Leuchtenbergia).

The sun never really gets too low on the horizon here in Hawaii - so these plants are already getting summer coloring (with the 'spring'-like weather).

Orchids at Koolau Farmers

I am trying to not get into orchids... trying really hard...

Our last trip to Koolau Farmers on Beretania we saw these and more... trying not to get into orchids....

Monday, January 23, 2017

Flowering Schizobasis intricata

As I was gardening yesterday, I was cleaning up some old growth from the two pots of Schizobasis and I saw these!

Super tiny flowers. I should keep a larger container of soil under these two pots to catch the seeds (otherwise they'll germinate all over the place...).

A New Aloe (No Name)

I bought this at the last CSSH meeting. Perla didn't have the name, but said it doesn't like direct sunlight and it will clump up.

Up Potting the Hylocereus Seedlings

The kids and I started upsizing the pots for some of the larger dragon fruit seedlings.

Monadenium ritchiei

I had a Monadenium that I picked up at a nursery - but it just kept getting taller and taller. It never fattened up and there were no signs of it developing offshoots. I took it to the last CSSH meeting to get it to someone else who may have better luck growing it. So I thought I was done with Monadenium, but we stopped off at Koolau Farmers on Beretania and they had starters of the fat clustering kind. Here are some pictures of the plant for future reference and I went ahead and potted it in the big red bowl (future entry into the plant shows???).