Succulents....cultivation

One advantage of growing Echeveria from seed is the variation that you can get.
A seed grown E.pulvinata.............
Echeveria pulvinata by longk48, on Flickr

And the seed parent..............
Echeveria pulvinata by longk48, on Flickr

 

The echiveria grown from seed are now looking good. I'll post photos tomorrow. Ive sown PVN seed from my own plant - waiting for that to germinate now

 

Hi all,

Hope you do not mind us joining in at this late stage, we had only just seen this interesting post.
Just that we bought some good looking young succulents a few weeks ago, from Wilko of all places.

They came in the smallest of pots about 35mm, so a couple of weeks ago we moved them into some 75mm pots and used Focus Cactus and Succulent Repotting mix.

When we removed the original pots they had good roots all around but it looked quiet peaty, the Focus mix seemed quiet sandy, but not a lot of grit as mentioned in the earlier posts.

As you can see they seem to be thriving and have really grown quiet quickly, the one on the right already sending up a flower spike.

We have yet to identify the exact species or how best to care for them etc, but other than repotting in the future with a more grittier mix should we be doing anything more ?

 

Thanks a lot

 

For what its worth, I don't really bother too much, I tend to use some JI no3, yes No3, put 50% sharp sand with it. I tends to suit most of the common stuff you are likely to come across, most are pretty happy in any kind of compost, it's just down to the grower to be aware of what the growing medium is when watering.

Lots of grit is basically for the heavy handed waterer or if growing outdoors.

Having said that, some of the more unusual cacti and succulents do need more specific composts, and then you really need to look up their preferred growing conditions.
If you are into it, look up the plant in question's growing habitat, it can be interesting and eye opening.

Just as a sideline, I've always struggled when I add grit to the surface of the pot, yeah it does look nice, but it's not easy to work out if the pot is wet or dry, rotted a few plants off with overwatering in my early days due to that.

 

Hi,

@pete - take your point have now removed the gravel which does make 'feeling' the pot easier.

Have also made a big mistake, had some small pieces rooting in the back of the greenhouse , but missed that they were getting mealy bugs and saw a lot of US ytubes saying spraying with Isopropyl Alcohol was a safe and sure way to get rid of them.

Well it sure did that, but most of them now have areas turning black and one seems, like the type below, to be dying off.

They were kept indoors, well out of any sun after spraying.

Any suggestions of a better methods of mealy bug control without affecting the plants ?

Used to use cotton buds and meths on orchids, but the succulents just too small for that method.

 

Recently I sprayed some pretty stubborn mealy bugs with washing up liquid, left it for a while then used an ordinary insecticide.
Remains to be seen if it has done a total kill.

 

Some very nice looking specimens shown on this thread.
If anyone is looking for an easy one to grow from seed, I'd suggest Stapelia. The flowers are very impressive - the downside is that they smell of rotten meat due to the pollinators being flies. Kept outside for most of the year that isn't really a problem.
Methylated spirit works well on scale insects and I believe it can also work on mealy bugs but don't have any direct experience with the latter.

 

Well not quite the next day but here are pics of seed grown echiveria sown 10 months earlier. Half size seed trays

Edit : He lied. Top ones are full sized seed trays