Loving their new home

Steady growth is a deceptive thing. It wasn't until I compared my September and December photos of the revamped succulent garden that I realised how much things have grown there. At least I know they're loving their new home, and that's the main thing I wanted to happen. Digging in vast amounts of sand has provided them with the free-draining soil they needed, and this relatively dryish spring has suited them just fine. Thank you Huey, the Rain God, very supportive gesture. And so it's on with the guided tour, and if any succulent experts can help me with a few names, I will be forever in your debt.

This morning, December 9, a happy little succulent patch.
Check out the photo below, to see how well it has grown.

This is the day I planted it all out, September 2. 

This hovering 'helicopter' shot shows how there's a bit of
crowding going on, but most of them have room to grow.
The main problem here is the green Sedum 'Autumn Joy'
centre left, which is making life hard for the sempervivums.

These portulacas (yellow and red flowers) have come up by
themselves. They are a weed of  a thing, so weedy I waged a
 battle to be rid of them a few years back, but with all the digging
of soil in so many places, some seed has come to the surface
and, typical of portulacas, raced away. Letting them grow on
might prove to be a mistake, but I do grudgingly admire them.

Sedum rubrotinctim 'Jelly Beans' with a little
pink tinge to the tips, are doing outrageously well.

Ditto the grey-blue Senecio nearby. Slow down!

At the back of the bed, a formerly neglected,
potted Crassula argenta 'Coral', a fat-trunked
mini tree, is loving its new home. Its interesting
dimple-ended fat succulent leaves were sparse
when I transplanted it here, but it's piling on the
foliage now and is now looking much more imposing.

Black-leaved Aeonium 'Schwartkopf' has grown a lot, so too
its neighbour, who I think might be a Senecio ameniensis.

Well-named, Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons' in
front, with another Senecio amaniensis at the
back, both belting along in the sandy soil.

This weirdo is an echeveria, E. 'Topsy Turvey'.

Euphorbia caput-medusae, or Medusa's head, will soon
be wearing a veil of these pretty little yellow flowers all over.

This trailing succulent, about to flower, is Senecio jacobensii.
It's probably happier in a hanging basket, on the edge of a
rock or ledge, but I am hoping it will grow down the gentle
slope. I have another one in a basket, just as a back-up.

At this stage, its flower looks like a bunch of julienned carrots.

As mentioned earlier, these sempervivums are being crowded
by the rapid spread of the Sedum 'Autumn Joy'. I'm keeping
a watch on this, which I suspect is an unfolding disaster.

Now, for the bit where the succulent experts might be able to
help. This person is growing well, colouring up nicely, but as
for its name I've got short odds on it being a graptoveria, but
go ahead and surprise me, tell me it's something else. All the
original plant label said was 'succulent'.

Same deal with this fascinating person, whose name I don't know.
When planted back in September, it looked decidedly unhealthy,
a bit 'wrinkly' in the foliage, but now it looks like it's back from
the health resort. Searching for something like it in books and
online has come up with the possibility it's an Argyroderma
of some sort (a what?); and there's a rough chance it could be a
haworthia even, but I honestly don't know its name.
EDIT: thanks to reader/commenter Ngeun, who has a great 
blog called Lithopsland, at first it looked like this person is
a Lapidaria of some kind, but then a kind friend of Ngeun's 
had a look, and the final decision is that it's Corpuscularia,
Probably C. lehmannii. Thank you LT Expanded!

Finally, if you have spotted one or two weeds lurking in the background of photos, yes they are there in numbers at all times. So far I roughly estimate that I have yanked out a few thousand baby weedlets in the last three months (lots of oxalis, natch). From this experience I think pebbles might be pretty but they are the least weed-suppressing mulch ever! Fortunately, in the extremely soft, sandy soil the weeds come out, roots and all, very easily. Wandering outside in the morning to pull out another few dozen weedlets has become part of the daily routine, but I think it has helped a lot. 

The other important benefit of spending those few minutes fussing over the succulent patch every morning is that it is so much rewarding fun. And that's the main thing!

Dripping wet

Lovely sound, gentle rain on a tin roof. And the changes a bit of morning rain brings to the garden are so tempting. No matter how much it rains, I just have to go out there and soak it up (the imagery, not the water). One delightful thing that rain does to the garden is that some plants actually look their best when they're wet, such as this weeping Acacia cognata, pictured below.

Though this is a wattle it doesn't flower in a
wattley way. It's a foliage plant that has come
into vogue in recent years, but it's a tricky
thing to keep happy in humid Sydney.
Somehow mine has survived (maybe that's
because it's one of "Pam's plants" of which
there are several here in the garden). When it
rains it becomes sparkly with raindrops held
in place against the laws of gravity.

You'd never notice this tiny spider web on top of the Acacia
when it's dry, but in this morning's rain it's a foam of rain bubbles.

I was almost going to leave my morning's posting on raindrops at simply admiring the lovely little weepy Acacia, but with little pocket camera in hand, everywhere I turned there was something which looked a bit lovelier in the rain. So here's a few more...

Looking almost waterproof, Sedum 'Autumn Joy'.

This other succulent sedum looks as if someone has hit the
'pause' button. Raindrops which should be sliding down the
smooth sides just hang onto the side as if they're blobs of glue.

Still green and young, these will grow up to
become Turkish Brown Figs one day.

I think the PestOil which I sprayed onto my Thai makrut lime
leaves (to deter aphids and citrus leaf miner) has played a hand
in making these leaves so water-repellent.

And lettuce always looks more delicious in the rain.

It hasn't really rained here enough during spring, so the garden needs a good drink. No matter how well I attempt to water all the plants here during the dry periods, they always prefer a drink from the heavens rather from the end of a hose. There's magic in rainwater: if you go outside in the rain, sometimes you can see it.

The two of us

With a max of around 29°C and the humidity meter set to 'muggy', only a foolish boy with a whole weekend ahead of him would get out the ladder and clippers today, to tame the espaliered lime, some wayward hedges and an olive tree with pretensions to grandeur. These jobs can wait till tomorrow, and in the meantime I can contemplate why some pairs of plants can be so different, and others so beautifully synchronised, and why I find all this so handy as a gardener.

This is just another excuse to play with Photoshop, a panorama of Amateur Land taken about half an hour ago. At the far right and far left of the panorama are my first "two of us" subjects, my cumquats. In between is a garden that right now needs little work.

My friend Michelle's cumquat on the left, mine is on the right. I'm baby-sitting Michelle's plant while she explores the Australian Outback for a year or so, from her base in Birdsville (her blog is in my blog links section). Her cumquat is a perfectly healthy little thing with vivid, dark green leaves. It flowers earlier than my plant, sets fruit earlier and is doing well, covered in baby fruits. But it hasn't grown all that much as a tree. My tree, by comparison, is growing like mad, and is also flowering well and covered in fruits now, and it's the younger of the two plants by about 12 months.

Can't be sure but I think these are fruits on Michelle's plant. Her plant has been in my care for about 12 months now and has received identical food, water, fertiliser as the other one. The only possible differences to explain the lack of growth are:

1. Michelle's plant was traumatised big-time by a 41°C summer scorcher on New Year's Day in 2007. My plant didn't exist at that time, I bought and planted mine later that year.

2. Michelle's plant is in a plastic pot, and mine is in a glazed ceramic pot.

And that's about it. Maybe the potting mixes are different, but they both drain well and I don't think they're a factor, as potting mixes lose fertility fairly fast, so they're both dependent entirely on the food I give them (which comes in a steady flow of light feeds every six weeks).

My guess is that the stout, healthy little plant is a tough little trauma victim which is soldiering on wonderfully, but maybe its root system is still regrowing and things are still are not all that good below-ground. There's a product sold here called Seasol, which is an organic, seaweed-based liquid that is marketed as a "root growth promoter" and "soil conditioner", rather than a fertiliser, so I've resolved to give the trauma victim a few fortnightly doses of magic elixir and see how it shapes up over the next few months. If that doesn't work, I'll repot it in late winter and see if fresh potting mix helps. That's all I can think of.

"Two of us" case number 2, the sedums. (Maybe I should give this one a Robert Ludlum style title such as "The Sedum Conundrum" – maybe not...) Two cuttings brought home from a visit to a gardener-pal in southern Australia. Both are sedums, both thriving in my friend Amanda's garden down south. On the left is Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and on the right, the plant I now call Sedumn 'No Joy'. Identical spots, identical potting mix, identical care. The one on the right is in a permanent sulk, its cousin on the left, delirious with joy.

These flower buds of 'Autumn Joy' start out light pink then darken as they open, the combination of blooms and foliage as fresh as happy teenagers having fun at the beach.

This one is doing the equivalent of sitting locked in its room listening to loud heavy metal music. Not happy. With all potted plants, my motto is "if not performing, repot!" And so that's all I can think of at this stage.

I have a soundtrack in mind for my final little "two of us" pairing – Bryan Ferry and "Let's Stick Together", although the lyric would have to alter to "let's bloom together, come on come on, let's bloom together". In one part of the garden, a potted crassula (which my Googling thinks is called "Baby's necklace", but which I like to think of as "Pagoda") has decided to flower. These are the buds, and the blooms themselves will be small, with reddish centres, I expect. (The green leaves? The oregano which never knows when it's not welcome).

Brought home from a local nursery only a couple of months ago, this had the very unhelpful label of "succulent" on it (as so many succulents do, unfortunately), but I am sure it's a crassula, too. To confirm my suspicions, the moment Crassula 'Pagoda' burst into bloom, so did this little fellow. There must be a crassula checklist buried in their DNA: temperatures down? Check. Daylight length shortening? Check. Bit of rain lately? Check. OK, Crassulas, let's do it!

I guess all I'm trying to say that it's always handy to have more than one of any plant in your garden, just so you have some reference point for its health, its progress and overall happiness. Once the crassulas finish flowering I'm thinking of potting them up into larger pots and putting them together, for company. I'll repot the 'No Joy' sedum and see what happens, and I'll give Michelle's cumquat a bit more specialised care before repotting. Without the comparison plants, I might have done nothing much more with any of them.