Aloelicious!

Nick over at Grow has been getting some really nice aloes in some Kelly Griffin hybrids, and other crosses, most of them smaller hybrids. Usually I am not a big aloe fan, but many people over at The Garden Forums have been showing off their beauties. I had to get at least a few of these beauties to try. He said there will be KG aloes up for auction this next C&SS meeting. I'd better stay away.

A lovely little bloom on a pretty little NOID rauhii cross.




Quicksilver X Rare Flare

Walmsley's Blue (Sold as Blue Elf)

deltoideodontaX from Abbey Gardens



and my pride & joy:

KG's Pink Blush














And Last but not least in the slightest, some pictures from Grow.

Lucy Would Have Been Proud

I know it's been a while since I've posted, life has gotten in the way of adventure. Saturday was one of the few noteworthy things that has happened in a long time. One of my biggest heroes through life has been Lucille Ball. She has always been a constant in my life. First through KTLA which played all the old re-runs from The Munsters to The Little Rascals to The Three Stooges to Laverne & Shirley. I Love Lucy had to be one of my favorites. Lucille Ball even introduced Carol Burnett to the TV audience. Anyway Lucy was known for her shenanigans and making reality a funny existence. I say reality, because I've done some things Lucy would have been proud of. I know she wouldn't roll her eyes at some of the things I've done like my family and friends are likely to do. One of my biggest obsessions is plants. I love getting free things also, now free plants, I just can't resist that ever! So that leaves me 19 Cymbidium Orchids richer. I think it was worth it, you can decide.

Lets start out with some pictures, and a little story k?

Saturday, I drove down and picked up some orchids from a flower farm which offers up their cymb plants about every other year on freecycle, I had no idea what to expect. (a year ago last July, I missed the greenhouse cleaning, but there was a nice woman who picked me up a few and saved them for me until I could go down and pick them up.) They clean out the greenhouses of the non-producing plants and replace them with younger plants, every couple of years.

This year I was not going to miss it, even though I was sick as a dog, I packed my purse, cell phone, and Kleenex, at 6:30 am pulled out of the driveway and headed on down to the other end of the county. I went with hopes of picking up a couple plants, hopefully with enough to spare to give away as gifts this year, as money is tight. Nipomo is not a beautiful place in any stretch of the word, but when I turned down the road to the flower farm I was flabbergasted. Fields of strawberries, lettuce, and all sorts of produce sprouting up along the way. I followed the signs which promised free orchids. There must have been twenty or thirty hoop greenhouses. I made it just after 8 am. there were already people lined up for their gems.

The whole production was amazing they drove you through the greenhouse itself and loaded every available space with 2-10 gallon pots. Now here on the Central Coast there is no need for expensive heated greenhouse, just the basic pole hoop houses are used. When it gets too cold the plastic on the ends are lowered and weighed down. These were hoop houses large enough for a tractor or car to drive through. Two Hispanic men filled my hatchback, with lowered seats, and stuffed three 2 gallon pots in the front seat. I finally laughed and had to tell them, "No mas!" Ten minutes from start to finish, I was loaded up with my orchids and headed out another way from the farm. I had barely enough room to pack myself on the driver side, hit the freeway, and not leave the thoroughfare for any reason. I stayed in the slow lane, as I could not see the whole passenger side of my car or out any of the windows. So I trucked on home, Kleenex in hand, stuffed up ears, swatting any of the jungle which encroached on my space and waving to all the people looking at me cross eyed. 100 miles later, I made it home safely, without a ticket at 10 am. I unloaded the car and headed back to bed. Whew! that was some trip!

This is the largest of the plants, as you can see it is overflowing it's pot, I had to drag it out of the car, down the driveway to the end of my bedroom.



Yup, all this filled my car! 18 or 19 plants total.


Of all the plants, only one had spikes, two of them.




All looks hopeful, there is new growth coming up everywhere!


It looks like I'll have blooms soon, too.


Purrum had to come and see what all the hubub was about and help (or hinder) anyway she could.


So now I'm stuck with a bunch of huge cymbs which are in desperate need of division, and I have no idea as to how to go about doing it. How many back bulbs should I leave with new growth? Will a back bulb produce "front" bulbs if it is left by itself? Should I remove the dead leaves from the p'bulbs? HELP!

I got some advise from a friend and tried my hand at surgery on my first victim yesterday. I sure hope it all goes well.

This Bud's (Not) For You

DH asked me the other day if I could make money off of my houseplants by propagating them. I said, "OH Yeah, I could!" I just need a greenhouse to keep them during the winter months. I was thumbing through my Charley's Greenhouse catalog, and they have plant cloners, I can't afford any. They would eventually pay for themselves, I know, but right now we're kind of destitute. I then went to my hydroponics wish book. I found a hydroponics store in Paso, I still need to get there one of these days, but I know they exist, that's a plus.

I have been researching plant cloners pricing for some time now, going from this website to that. They are about as expensive as anything, some cost more than my car did. Anyway, I thought there has to be a way to make one. I made a protein skimmer for my salt water aquarium, how much harder could this one be? So I head on over to Google and ahve a looksee. Every site I found either wanted me to buy their plans, book, or setup or was a forum for illegal medicinals. Those guys sure know how to grow their plants! We gardeners should take a lesson from these closet growers, because they have some nice homemade hydroponics setups. I was impressed and scared by their ingenuity. Imagine what they could do if they tried to patent their setups, they would make a mint!

Back from the rabbit trail. I went to about 7 different cannabis fan sites to get plans for a homemade cloner. I just want to grow some Hoyas to sell, that's it. I know big government knows a lot more about me now than I do myself. They probably host those sited just so they can get IP addresses. The jaws are closing in on me, lol. I finally today found a tutorial which did not mention whether I needed male and female plants and how large of a bong to get. I'll take all the informative stuff I gleaned from the cannabis sites and this one and make myself a cloner. I'll let you know how it goes, and whether the feds come pounding on my door looking for pot. I'll even post pictures and a tutorial of my own.

International Plant Trading

After years of trading plants and seed via postal routes, I have finally considered trading internationally. Not to say I have never done it, well yes I have never done it legally. Out of ignorance I did send some cuttings over seas once. but now I am considering doing it legally. I know Australia is really stuffy about their flora and fauna coming in and out, that is why parrots are so expensive here and shot over there. I think importation should not be so hard to do that it means a depression or over flow on either side. Let's face it, cockatoos are pests and shot by farmers in Australia. Over here they are kept as pets. Why not allow the supply meet the demand? PETA and CITES have really gone overboard on the control of importing. However I am not shipping birds, but a few seeds to a fellow gardener in Australia, who I know beyond a doubt will not be planting them out in the wild, nor will they ever see the outside of a pot.

While on or side of the pond, many pelt bearing animals are being starved because there is no demand for the fur. They are over populating then maraud farms for their chickens and other livestock. I remember the bear we had in our back woods, he ate over $300 worth of chicken dinner before we could get the phone number from animal regs for the county trapper, it took two days for the trapper to finally catch the bear. He could not be relocated, so was killed a few feet from my back door. The poor thing had a broken jaw and was 150 pounds under weight. Now that is cruelty to let animals get that skinny, even wild animals. While I understand he had a broken jaw and couldn't hunt, Why was he somewhere where a car could hit him, because it would have taken a really hard impact to break a bear's jaw. He would have had to be looking for food.

What about the mountain lion in the creek? He is also skinny, so skinny that I won't let my children walk down there unless they are in a large group and with an adult. Or the one which was walking through San Luis Obispo, our county seat, a few months ago. It wasn't doing anything, just walking around, but it got some buck shot between the eyes for just trying to find some food. That is cruelty. Fur bearing animals are no longer hunted, and now are facing many diseases, like mange, and rabies. This is all done in the name of humane treatment of animals. It is ignorance pure and simple. These animals need to be put down if they are obvious not healthy. They need to be put down if their food supply isn't meeting the demands of the species. This is for the better of the whole species. We could always send the pelts to other countries which are going to be freezing come winter because they have lost their homes in earthquakes fires and tornados.

It's well known the smaller the area an animal lives in, eventually through the generations the animals get smaller. Look at Shetland ponies, and the pygmy elephants of Borneo. They probably got stranded on their islands and instead of starving, bred themselves into smaller animals. This is also true of animals in larger areas, they get bigger. Reptiles are an excellent example, they continue to grow all their life. I have a feeling that Noah only needed one kind of cat and one kind of dog to take along on his boat, selective breeding did the rest. In some cases it doesn't have to be generations. Look at gold fish, a gold fish in a bowl will always stay the size it can safely be in such a small space, but you put the fish in a large pond and it is the size of a nice koi in no time. It doesn't take a degree to figure this out.

We see the same kinds of adaptation in humans, fairer skinned people are from areas where there is less light, darker skinned people from more sunny and hot areas. The needs of the community was adapted in the genetics of the whole. A fair skinned person will either get darker or die of heat stroke in Africa, while a darker skinned person will turn pale in a more northern area. There is no difference in what makes us human. Who cares about skin color, though except maybe Darwin who said that black people were more primitive examples of humanity. This smacks as bigotry. But then he was trying miserably to prove a case he had no proof of, of which he later recanted. It is still being taught as fact, no longer a theory, but fact! We are all human and have been human since the beginning of the world, or at least six days from the beginning of the world, but that's another argument.

Anyway, off the rabbit trail. I am also trying to legally import some aloes from South Africa. Never mind that these seedlings have never been in habitat, nor their parents for that matter, I still need a book's worth of paperwork to import them and about $200 in fees. No wonder so many people say forget about the papers and send plants illegally anyway. It's not like I'm asking for the whole population of one kind of aloe. I just want a few plants. Each plant is going to end up costing me about $20 each, for seedlings no matter! I'll never be able to make that money back, unless I can find some super cheap, super good fertilizer which causes them to grow by leaps and bounds without causing mutations.

So I ask, is thinning of the population of one species beneficial to the colony as a whole? Yes it is! That is the only logical answer. PETA and CITES need to take a number in the line that gives out common sense and accommodate. That's all I have to say.

Aloe'v It!

Sunday, I went to the Central Coast C&SS meeting because for one, Nick the cactus guy has been trying to get me to go for some time and I needed to ask Nick a question. Since DH left my cell phone at work, I went to Cambria to look around. I was greeted by Nick's lovely wife, bought a couple blooming hoyas, Hoya lacunosa and Hoya Kerrii and then I trucked on down to SLO Town to have a look.
The plant of the month was Aloe, and the slide show was on Namibian succulents, which include many of the mesmebs, Pachys, and many Aloes we see today. For all those who don't know their geography, Namibia is to the west and north of South Africa. It is a desert climate which has both winter and summer growing succulents.

When I arrived, having had my fill on the sorriest Burrito Supreme I had ever had, (note to self never eat at Taco Bell in SLO again) and after paying my Verizon bill, I was greeted with about 80 people sitting and nattering waiting for the big show. I got my free plant for my first visit, it was an Oreocereus. I was seconds away from getting a Mexican Fence Post! I then proceeded to the sales table and picked up a few gems.
This is Gymnocactus saueri, I had hoped for blooms today, but no luck. Maybe I need to put it in a bit more light. I hope it blooms tomorrow. I was goofing with the spines and it seems like the spines are barbed, much like a bee stinger. Encephalocarpus strobiliformis and Avonia quinaria ssp alstonii both were shown on The Garden Forums and I remembered them. I hope I can keep them alive and as nice looking as they are now. Right now I have my gems in a cardboard box with paper stuffed around them to keep them from falling or tumbling. Both these guys are no bigger than a quarter. I really have no idea how to care for them, so maybe I'll just neglect them and water once every other month. Jungle cactus are so much easier to care for because they tend to require normal houseplant care.

Now the Aloes, I'm not sure of the names on any of them, I was sitting in the back and couldn't hear as well as I would have liked. I tend to be hard of hearing.
I don't know why this picture is sideways, it was uploaded right side up. Anyway if you can turn your screen sideways, it is a picture of a pair of clumping aloes. The one in the back has a story, apparently it had rotted out and is not supposed to be a tree form aloe. A nice variegate. Aloes tend to turn red while in the sun. I love the red toothy ones.



If any of you are aloe growers, you know that Kelly Griffin hybrids are about the best of the best and people would sell their first born to get one of the nicer ones. This is one of his newer hybrids. It also has a pup, I wonder if I can talk Nick into selling it to me. Probably not, but I can dream. The interesting thing I learned about KG hybrids are they tend to be crossings of winter and summer growing aloes, which means they may bloom twice a year.

Well I hope you all enjoyed the show, I know I did.

CCC&SS Show & Sale

This one will be a bit short on words, but many fine pictures. I was surprised with the quality of plant material shown here, I would love and hate to be a judge. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. The only bad thing I can say about the show is there were only two epiphyllums in the whole show, and they were pretty sad looking, any one of mine could easily beat them.

The lovely Sans (dead center) I mentioned from Grow. I love the pot it's in also.

This is about one of the largest Dioscorea I have ever seen. Lovely!

Sales Tables...


I hope you got a taste of my visit to the Central Coast Cactus & Succulent Society's show and sale.

A Visit to Grow!

I know it's been a while since I've posted here, life has been long and hard lately. I trust that the Lord will give me some rest soon. Anyway, I have a few posts which I am going to stagger date wise. I will try to get the dates about the right time of the happenings....



You all know if you've read any of my posts how much I love going to Grow in Cambria, CA. It is about my favorite nursery by far. Nick the cactus guy, as my children call him, is a really nice guy and goes out of his way to please his customers.



He is also the President of the local Cactus & Succulent Society. Richard, who works there is also really neat, he makes some of the pottery for the shop. I can't say much about the pottery because my mouth is drooling thinking about some of the beautiful pieces there. hehe Anyway, it is a must stop, if anyone is in the Cambria area.



Our tour begins at the front door. The front garden area is more than one picture can handle, lucky you! This visit, Nick's wife was there to greet me and was kind enough to let me take a few pictures. While my husband sat in the car waiting impatiently.



Usually my husband is forgiving of what I buy, but his eyes glazed once he realized I was coming home with about eight large plants. I think I got an excellent price. He didn't. This visit, I got VIP treatment and got to talk to Nick while he was out of town.




The open sign shows a sense of humor. When closed, it says, "Shut." My usual day for visiting is Mondays, since I can drop DH off at work and do some shopping while in own. I love the feel of the front walkway. It is very inviting, and precludes what wonders are inside perfectly.





To the left of the door, there are all sorts of goodies to be seen. My daughter loves looking at the Lithops. She calls them all "Teds" and "Ted Friends." My eldest son named his first Lithops, "Ted" his baby toes was "Tedville" then there was "Ted City" and "Tedtropolis." When he was younger, he named everything "Rocky." All I could think of was Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa. Imagine a Lion Fish with Stallone's face. Anyway, she took after her big brother in calling them "Teds." Don't get me going on "Grandpa Fish."



A beautiful Euphorb crest and some nice Sansieveria. Sans are about the easiest plants to neglect and thrive on neglect. If you are heavy on the watering Sans, are not for you. One of these days I'm going to buy a few Sans from Nick. One I really want is a club Sans, which I haven't seen for quite a while. Look in the next post for a Sans that is to die for which came from Nick's shop. Nick is also beginning to sell begonias. I know they wouldn't last a wkk in my house. They are pretty, but a complete waste of money. Nick top dresses ever plant which comes in. I really prefer them not to have a dressing, but I guess he sells more that way.




Here is another nice Sans with some of the beautiful pottery as a background. Don't they make you want to drool also? If I ever get into Sans, this would probably be the first plant I'd buy, if it's still there. I'd also buy a nice Richard pot to plant it in. ;) It is a beautiful fan shape. This really appeals to me. some sans I see are just a large mess of leaves with no rhyme or reason to their shape. this one is lovely. I would put it in the shallow pot in the right hand corner of this picture.




Aeonium tabuliforme is huge in it's 10 in pot. I have never seen one so big. It's a lovely plant, which is another thing I'm sure to kill with kindness. The last time I was in he had some smaller plants which were tabling, this one he sold to someone, hopefully it's in a nice shaded spot where it won't burn. My Aeoneums have all sunburned. I'm ashamed to show them to anyone. I finally had to uproot them and I put them in a hanging basket with a few agaves. I hope they do better shaded.




Now for the back area.... I love this area, although I'm not a big pokey fan, I do like to look at all the plants, I'd probably kill within a week of having them. I'll stick to Epiphyllums, Hoyas, and Rhipsalis. That's great, because I could really go bankrupt if I did. This is a really nice Variegated Aeoneum crest. I killed my last one, so I'll leave it for others to grow.





A lovely Aloe which is probably well over 20 years old. This thing is huge, I think it's grown in the ground and holds well during the winter. Nick has an amazing aloe which probably came from this batch, it is in a tree form, which the others like it Nick said are clumping aloes. It sure is a beauty though, one I'd love to have in my collection. No maybe not, I'd probably kill it also.




I love this Pachy crest, it was at the C&SS show and sale. I do hope Nick sold it, I am tempted to take it home with me every time we go to Grow. I love how the waggon wheel accents the Pachy, I think this would make an excellent post card from Grow, hint hint, Nick if you read this!

And one of the ones which came home with me... Epiphyllum "Andromeda" You can see more of the beautiful pottery behind it.