Succulents: 6 Weeks Later

So, it's been six weeks since we planted our succulents on the patio and I want to share with you how they're doing!!!

I didn't really start doing the top down photos until about a week after they were all first planted, so unfortunately you can't really see the before and after as well with this pot.  You can tell the succulents have really started to fill in the empty spaces!

This was the only pre planted pot we purchased, and it's been doing really well!  I had to turn it a little bit and get it closer to the sunny spots on the patio, but it seems to be doing really nicely.  The one side that was away from the sun originally started to seem like it was dying a bit so I weeded out the dead leaves and left the stalks to hopefully rebound.

This pot is so cute - I love the flat leaves that are a little green/blue/violet.  They are so cool!!!  Again, I accidentally took the first photos from the side, but this is the pot that has had the least growth of all of them.  Hopefully that's because these are more spring/summer growing succulents and we'll see more activity once winter is over.

The coup de gras - my standing pot.  This pot has OBVIOUSLY had some explosive growth in the last six weeks.  The agave has all but taken over the empty spots and the little flat leafed plant has grown at least three inches taller in the last six weeks.  I see this pot the most because it is so visible through our sliding glass door, and it's the pot I am the most proud of for sure.

More updates to come in another six weeks!!!

Succulents and Cactus

With all of Sam's free time, we're working on cultivating hobbies that we both enjoy.  

One of the things I suggested is gardening.

I love gardening!  

I wish we had a real backyard so I could really do some serious landscaping, and it turns out Sam really likes outdoor home improvement activities.  Win-win!  

I've had a couple of different plants since I moved to Southern California.  There were some short-lived  geraniums on the Newport Peninsula that fried in the all-day direct sunlight.  Then I had an orchid that lived for about 2 years but couldn't find the right amount of sunlight in our current apartment. 

So far, my biggest success has come from a rubber plant my brought down after we moved into our apartment.  It's managed to survive (barely) for 2 years despite numerous periods of neglect.  Which got me thinking, maybe we needed to rethink the kinds of plants we were trying to cultivate.  Perhaps we should move away from the florals in favor of succulents.

So Sam agreed to check out succulents with me this morning and we headed to Lowes to see what we could find.  When we arrived, Sam found some cactus plants that looked pretty neat next to the succulents.  He also found some really neat pots that fit in with the ones we already have as well as the patio furniture for housing potted plants at different heights.  Major win-win!

Interestingly enough, we bought one pre-potted compilation of low-moisture succulents and cacti but we bought loose plants to put into 3 additional pots.  It's the perfect mix of do it yourself meets prefabrication.  And they are actually pretty cool looking when you mix them together.

 So hopefully we'll have better luck with these bad boys than I have had with previous iterations of potted plants and patio gardening.  At the very least, hopefully Hunter won't be eating these plants since these plants have spikes and prickly needles.