Succulents and Righting Past Wrongs with Houseplants

Three weeks ago I posted here about my new plant obsession - succulents.

Since then I've posted about it on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and I've also made a YouTube video on the subject - why?

Background

As I said in my last post, my history with houseplants reads like the plot of a murder mystery, except I'm clearly the villain. I've starved them of light, water and food, then drowned them for a while, and finally dumped their lifeless forms in the compost heap - dark eh!

When I rescued a sad Echeveria 'Perle Von Nurnberg' to try my hand at succulent propagation, I fully expected to fail, but I've learnt so much recently, from various succulent websites and YouTubers, that my crown cuttings have rooted and are growing, babies are forming on the rooted stems, and many of the leaf cuttings have grown roots too.

Now

Spurred on by this success, I bought some more 'Perle Von Nurnberg' from the reduced section of my local DIY store, bought some unidentified Echeveria, a Graptopetalum 'Opalina', and some Pachyphytum oviferum (aka Moonstones) cuttings, plus some mixed cutting from Little Bunny Lilac's Etsy store. My collection was growing fast

Then I realised I had a problem -  I'd run out of window sill space!

We had a large plastic shelving unit going spare, so I decided to invest in some grow lights, and fit them to the shelves for a fancy grow-station.

After lots of research, I went for the Sunblaster Nano Tech T5 light combo kits. They come with the full-spectrum light tube, a reflector, fittings and fixings, a power cable and a double ended cable so you can connect two lamps together. If you would like to see me installing the lights, then do watch the Youtube video, I'd appreciate the views (and don't forget to like,share and subscribe while you're there ;-) )

I started with four lamps, enough for two shelves...then I went on a shopping spree at Surreal Succulents, and had to buy two more for a third shelf - Oops

Succulent Grow Shelves

So here we are just three weeks down the line, and I have already had to expand my infrastructure twice over. I'd better not do it again in three weeks time!

Let's give you a list of the plants on the shelves, as far as I can, many plants are supplied unlabelled, and Echeveria for example come in hundreds and hundreds of hybrid varieties. Unless you have bought a named variety, grown from a named variety parent plant by a reputable source, you will be unlikely to identify it with any certainty.

Echeveria	Runyonii ‘Topsy Turvy’	‘Perle von Nurnberg’	prolifica
Graptoveria	‘Opalina’	‘Debbie’	acaulis	‘Pik Ruza’
Sedum	morganianum burrito	Rubrotinctum ‘Aurora’	‘Sandra Mottram’	clavatum
Crassula	ovata	mesembryanthemoides	ovata ‘Gollum’	‘Horn tree’	perforata	tetragona
Sedeveria	‘Leitzia’
Haworthia	cooperii
Pachyphytum	oviferum
Kalachoe	pumila
Senecio	rowleyanus
Cremnosedum	‘Little Gem’

My succulent journey is well and truly on the way, I'm looking forward to propagating lots of young plants so that I can start making projects with them all. Keep a look out for upcoming posts and YouTube videos.

Love
PB xx